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Woodstock officials are embarking on a new plan to figure out what downtown could look like in the future.
The City Council approved a contract Tuesday with the Lakota Group of Chicago to come up with the plan. The urban design firm has worked on projects such as a downtown plan for Itasca and a town center feasibility assessment and concept design in Homer Glen, according to the company’s proposal submitted to the city.
Woodstock previously commissioned a downtown plan in 2019, but Economic Development Director Jessica Erickson wrote in a 2025 progress report that the city should work on a new plan.
During the City Council meeting Tuesday, when the city approved of commissioning the study, some council members said they wanted to make sure the plan had actionable items for officials.
Council member Melissa McMahon said she supported the plan but wants to see more direction from it than the parks master plan. She said that document was good, and the city needed to know the parks’ inventory, “but it wasn’t much of a plan.”
She said she wanted direction from the company and the planners. If the city is going to spend the dollars to have the study done, “somebody needs to tell us what to do,” McMahon said.
Erickson said her intention was to make it very clear that the city is looking for an actionable plan, not just something that will sit on a shelf.
“I think the criticality of this plan at this time is that we’re facing a very different funding environment going forward, both from private sector investment, as well as state and federal funding perspective, for any grants that we might pursue,” Erickson said, adding that those dollars won’t be granted in the future without investing in planning.
Matt Cole of the Lakota Group said the company wants to leave the city with a plan with a “solid implementation strategy.”
Cole said the company won’t disappear when the plan is done. He added that with many of the plans the company generates, it will follow up a year or year and a half later to see how the plan is going and to address any barriers clients are running into.
Council member Gordie Tebo said he wants to see the Lakota Group come up with ideas that maybe Woodstock didn’t think about.
“Be creative and give us options. That’s what I want to see,” Tebo said.
In response to a question from Tebo, City Manager Roscoe Stelford said the city administration is proposing that funding for the estimated $155,000 plan come from the city’s tax increment financing fund. Stelford said the city has money in there for Benton Street improvements, but the project has been delayed.
The project scope entails taking an inventory of the current conditions, gathering stakeholder input, coming up with design and placemaking strategies, developing housing and economic development strategies, creating a step-by-step action plan outlining goals and milestones, and determining where to get funding, Erickson wrote in a memo to Stelford about the plan.
“Key deliverables for the downtown master plan project include the production of a comprehensive downtown master plan report that integrates all aspects of the analysis – ranging from market trends and physical condition assessments to community engagement findings – into a cohesive narrative,“ Erickson wrote. ”This report will feature detailed maps, visual renderings and descriptive narratives that communicate the proposed strategies for revitalizing our historic downtown.”
Erickson said the 2019 plan was supposed to be a 10- to 15-year plan, but COVID-19 and other economic factors prompted the need for a new plan. The new downtown master plan is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026.