Rediscovering Chester wins second award Village Master Plan honored by state planning group

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The Vermont Planners Association has announced that it has given Chester’s Village Center master plan its Plan of the Year award, recognizing outstanding achievements in community planning in Vermont.

Nominees come from all corners of Vermont and represent the best in local, regional and state planning by citizens and professional planners over the last year. This is the 26th year such awards have been made by the association. Last month, the Vermont chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects gave SE Group of Burlington a Merit Award in the category of Planning and Analysis for its work on the Chester Village Center Master Plan.

A VPA press release called, Rediscovering Chester a plan built on engaging the community in a process to create a unified vision for village revitalization and established a clear implementation plan to further this vision.

The Rediscovering Chester Master Plan places a high emphasis on building upon what works, fixing what needs to be fixed and assuring the results enrich the lives of residents and visitors. The plan sets forth a comprehensive implementation strategy with ideas for phasing and funding to help the community move forward.

Recently, the Town of Chester has been able to leverage the plan to obtain an $800,000 Bicycle and Pedestrian Program grant from VTrans for sidewalk and streetscape improvements along Depot Street from Bargfrede Road to Town Hall. The town also recently secured a municipal planning grant for rewriting the town’s zoning regulations after a zoning audit.

The awards will be presented at 4 p.m. on Thursday April 19 in the Cedar Creek Room of the Vermont Statehouse in Montepelier.