Visioning project sees variety of hopes for town’s future

Sidewalks made of trampolines and purple trees lining the streets of Vermillion may seem futuristic and out-of-this-world, but one local organization is encouraging community members of all ages to envision the perfect Vermillion, no matter the logistical challenges.

Greening Vermillion, a year-old organization that promotes sustainability within the community, has been working on a project called “Visioning Vermillion” for the past year, ultimately seeking to discover the high hopes and dreams people have for their town.

“We took a different approach to say it doesn’t have to be realistic. It can be whatever you want. What surprised us is we still got a lot of people saying realistic things …” said Susan Port, executive director of Greening Vermillion.

The year-long project began in August 2015 after Greening Vermillion received a grant from the Community Innovation Grant from the South Dakota Community Foundation.

They partnered with United Way of Vermillion to host a number of “vision sessions” with community groups such as the Lion’s Club, Boy Scout Troop, churches, etc. where they posed the question: “What would you really like to see for Vermillion’s future?”

From there, participants were part of a dialogue where they shared their ideas. They also had available to them a blank map of Vermillion where they could draw a representation of their perfect Vermillion.

“We had this idea that if they would draw, that maybe people would be more free with ideas, people could identify on these maps,” said Meghann Jarchow, coordinator of sustainability at USD and a member of Greening Vermillion’s board of directors.

Jarchow came up with the idea, and was one of the main organizers of the project alongside Port. Along with doing vision sessions, they also tabled outside businesses in town like Hy-Vee and inside the Muenster University Center, collecting answers from passersby. Over the course of the year, Jarchow said they talked with more than 500 people.

“I was really pleasantly surprised in terms of we didn’t necessarily lead people toward anything focused on sustainability, but people said a lot of things … related to sustainability,” Jarchow said.

In terms of the visioning, some of main categories in which there was a lot of overlapping interest included recreational amenities, parks/greenspace and pedestrian-friendly city items.

Port said though the visioning sessions may be over, the Visioning Vermillion project still has a lot to offer the community.

“Greening Vermillion personally plans to use the visions that align with our mission and set goals for ourselves over the next five years that we can accomplish,” Port said. “We’re definitely using this visioning process to help formulate what we can do for our community in the future.”

This past month and in the coming months, the data collected will be compiled and used to create an interactive presentation based on all the responses the project generated. The plans will officially be “unveiled” to the community April 23 during Greening Vermillion’s annual Earth Days celebration.

“We want people to come to our event and interact with us. We’re going to have very interactive displays,” Port said. “We want them to attend and give them an opportunity to expand on these visions.”

Attendees of the event will be invited to share feedback relating to the displays. Additionally, Port said she will be going back to the groups who she hosted the visioning sessions to share the information with them.

“One of the things that I was really glad about was that we got a broad cross- section of the Vermillion community that we talked to,” Jarchow said. “Our goal was to be inclusive, and I think we did a good job and we certainly worked hard to try and be inclusive.”