Thief River Falls

New Vision for Downtown Community Master Plan

An older woman speaks with other adults while gesturing to a map

Thief River Falls has the assets of a nice downtown with wide streets and some handsome historic buildings and is also in the middle of transforming towards what it might become to meet the needs of its community that now includes a workforce from the region due to the presence of some large global businesses based here. The phenomenon and the challenge of transforming of towns towards present and future needs is not unique to TRF.

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Across the nation, communities are developing and evolving their buildings and infrastructure in response to changing economic, social and environmental conditions and generational needs. The goals of the A New Vision for Downtown Vision were:

  • To promote a business climate that enhances economic vitality and improves the quality of life for all residents
  • To develop a master plan with community engagement that creates a unified, welcoming environment and provides documents that can be used for fundraising and implementation of the master plan

Through precedent research and community engagement the design context was identified and seven design principles were proposed in response, final recommendations priorities identified for the new vision.

Time Period:
June 2017–October 2017

CSBR Team:
Virajita Singh, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Sustainable Building Research
Joe Polacek, Graduate Research Assistant, Center for Sustainable Building Research, Master of Urban Planning Program, Humphrey School of Public Affairs