The shelter’s design will complement nearby green space and add steady, positive foot traffic to the core. “It’s good for animals and good for business,” Egger notes. Beyond downtown, the city is preparing to rezone a segment along Raytown Road to attract light industrial users. With proximity to I-70 and the stadium that corridor is primed for small and midCity Administrator Diane Egger points to a Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel (ULI TAP) focused on downtown Raytown. The panel’s walkthrough produced a pragmatic playbook: lean into the Rock Island Trail as an anchor, activate green spaces with pop-up and market concepts, and remove regulatory friction that slows adaptive reuse of older buildings. “We’re assessing incentives case by case,” Egger says. “Everything’s on the table—zoning updates, expedited permitting, and targeted tools—to help the right projects move faster,” she adds. That urgency is backed by capital. The city is deploying $7.2 million in GO bond projects, with the first slated downtown to upgrade core infrastructure and streetscapes that signal “we’re open for business.” An unexpected near-term lift: a new animal shelter in the downtown footprint—the city’s first—arriving as many regional shelters struggle or consolidate. 53 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 11 RAYTOWN, MO
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