At last nights Special Meeting to hear Civic Center Survey Results along with the Y and Johnson County Library, we took one step closer to seeing what a civic center in PV might look like.

Attendees at last nights meeting received a presentation by Wiese Group explaining the survey results. After a Q&A among council members, representatives for our partners, and the residents in attendance, Prairie Village City Council voted unanimously to approve City staff to put together a proposal for sending out an RFP to local architectural firms for conceptual plans and community engagement workshops.

No costs have been approved at this time, aside from the staff time needed to put together a proposal. This puts us in phase II and III of the three phase Memorandum of Understanding of our partnership with the other two entities, and any of the three parties may walk away at any time with no further monetary investment.

The gist of the survey results is that, of the Prairie Village residents who were contacted via random phone survey and who participated in the voluntary online survey, 75% said they “definitely would” or “probably would” use a new Prairie Village Community & Civic Center. There were many different breakouts of the data presented last night, and many other iterations of breakouts that Council members, including myself, would like to see, but I felt reasonably reassured by this data that reinforced what I heard at the Ward 3 residents’ doors this summer:

• Residents with elementary age children want a better facility.
• Seniors who use the Y now want a better facility. (I believe that’s their biggest membership base right now)
• Seniors who don’t use the Y now would definitely reconsider membership if there was a better facility, so they could take better of advantage of their health insurance programs.

Stay tuned for what’s next! Phase III in particular will require lots of resident input and engagement, so I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say about the project as a whole, and what you’d like to see in the space if it were to be built in the future.

Take care and reach out if you have any questions or concerns,