{"id":34970,"date":"2018-06-01T13:25:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T20:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/kent-wins-governors-smart-communities-award-for-meeker-street-plans\/"},"modified":"2018-06-01T13:30:25","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T20:30:25","slug":"kent-wins-governors-smart-communities-award-for-meeker-street-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/kent-wins-governors-smart-communities-award-for-meeker-street-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent wins Governor&#8217;s Smart Communities Award for Meeker Street plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The city of Kent received the Governor&rsquo;s Smart Communities Award for its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kentwa.gov\/government\/meet-me-on-meeker\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"link\">Meet Me on Meeker <\/a>Streetscape standards project.<\/p>\n<p>The awards program recognizes achievements by local leaders who promote growth planning and projects that contribute to thriving communities, strong economies and sustainable infrastructure in Washington state.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Outstanding local collaboration is key to creating sustainable communities with a shared vision for their future growth and prosperity,&rdquo; said Gov. Jay Inslee in a news release last week to announce the winners. &ldquo;These community projects demonstrate why Washington is such a special place to live, work and play.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Meet Me on Meeker project seeks to re-imagine a former main street that has experienced neglect and disinvestment into a safe and welcoming environment for visitors and residents, according to a city media release. The project aims to increase economic development opportunities by raising the standard of urban design and creating a more walkable, desirable urban street.<\/p>\n<p>The city hired engineering and urban design consultants KPG to prepare a city policy for street and sidewalk design, called the Meet Me on Meeker Streetscape standards. The standards are the key to going from concept to funded construction.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This project is going to be transformational, and we&rsquo;re delighted that the governor&rsquo;s office chose to recognize us,&rdquo; said Hayley Bonsteel, city long range planning manager. &ldquo;We know the look and feel of a major street like Meeker impacts business retention and how the city is perceived. These kinds of improvements are central to the city&rsquo;s economic development strategy. Plus, with new housing being built along Meeker, we&rsquo;re minimizing congestion by making it easier to walk, use transit, or ride a bike.&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet Me on Meeker project <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":34971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34970"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}