Ottawa in Purple Crayon
Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” Another way to look at it is as Rosie Verhoff states in the below video, “We create our own history.” We shape our future with the decisions we make today, and form our history with how we tell that story afterwards.
Go Ottawa was created to help do both of those things. Our mission is to create vibrancy in downtown Ottawa and beyond. Our vision is for downtown Ottawa to be a thriving hub of activity that connects to the Blanchard River, provides residents and visitors with entertainment and recreation opportunities, and attracts real estate and small business investment. We do this by celebrating the assets we have and building into those more. By celebrating who we are and not shying away from who we are becoming. By creating our own future and sharing our story.
What future are we creating?
Go Ottawa has divided our ‘creation’ plan into four themes. Over the course of the next few months, we will dive deeper into each of these themes.
Go Ottawa Plan Themes:
Public Space – Reconnect our existing parks and river, fill in gaps in our public realm, and redesign Main Street and other priority streets as interconnected, active parts of our public space system
Streets and Trails – Build safe bicycle and pedestrian connections between our schools, the reservoir, downtown, and the river. Then, look further out and better connect to Gilboa and Glandorf.
Hospitality and Experiences – Support existing businesses as well as new food and beverage opportunities, boutique lodging, and multi-use event venues in and adjacent to downtown Ottawa.
Districts and Neighborhoods – Support existing homeowners, diversify our product mix, increase downtown housing options, and proactively recruit quality residential developers.
These four themes will drive our direction for the future we are creating, one that is a bit more walkable, bikeable and floatable.
What history are we creating?
Our story will embrace Ottawa’s hospitality, neighborliness and family-friendliness, while equally embracing and communicating the potential for a contemporary version of small-town life. Our story will show that Ottawa is ‘worthy of our best.’ - that we have an energy that makes others just want to be a part of it.
Go Ottawa has been given an opportunity to help predict Ottawa’s future and create our history. We are capitalizing on an energy that has been building in Ottawa and we are excited to harness that energy for these next phases. We need your help though. Help can come in many forms.
If you have an interest in providing feedback and taking action on these initiatives, we would love for you to join a committee. Go Ottawa has four committees:
Design Committee: Involves improving Ottawa's image by improving its physical appearance.
Organization Committee: Involves building consensus and cooperation between the groups that play a role in Ottawa.
Promotion Committee: Involves promoting Ottawa's uniqueness to shoppers, investors, new businesses, visitors and others.
Economic Vitality Committee: Involves strengthening and diversifying the existing economic base of downtown.
If a committee does not interest you, but you would like to still volunteer for events or projects, please send us an email (hello@go-ottawa.com) and we can reach out with our next opportunity for this. If you are able to support us monetarily, we are actively searching for community partners to help sustain this new non-profit financially. These contributions will have a direct feed into making our strategic plan a reality. Last but not least, if none of those are a good fit for you, then you can still help by simply sharing our story. Be an advocate for Go Ottawa and our mission to bring more vibrancy to our beautiful little town.
We will leave you with this thought to ponder.
There is a children’s story, Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. A four-year old boy has a magical purple crayon that gives him the power to create anything he imagines. He can create his own world just by drawing it. We don’t know the exact details of what Ottawa will look like in 3, 5, 10 years, but we have a plan and a purple crayon. Please join us on this journey as we use that crayon to draw our future for Ottawa.