Every five years, Great Rivers Greenway updates the Regional Plan, the long-term strategic plan for the agency, to ensure that we continue to deliver our mission through the voices of the people in the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Charles County. The Great Rivers Greenway Board of Directors approved the original Regional Plan in 2004 with a vision for a network of greenways that would become one of the top reasons people love the St. Louis region. Two updates to the plan have been since been adopted, in 2011 and 2016. We are ready to work together to plan the next five years.

The assessment portion of this plan has begun, with five focus areas: Conservation; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Operations and Maintenance, Planning and Design and Public Safety. Plus, the team is also working to develop an organizational metrics strategy to determine the best ways to measure outcomes. The process involved assessing current conditions, aligning existing plans with ever-changing needs and prioritizing next steps. The activities over the next 18 months, with an enormous amount of community input, will help the agency continue to refine the process of prioritizing projects, day-to-day operations and managing assets long-term with partners. While Great Rivers Greenway was originally set up just to build greenways, with partners operating and maintaining them, that model has proven complicated in the St. Louis region and continues to evolve. We look forward to exploring possible models with partners and community members as just one of the aspects of this planning process.