Executive Summary

The Great Falls Neighborhood has a number of retail and restaurant corridors that serve the community by providing residents with groceries, meals, personal services, and other consumer needs. This strategy will help strengthen local businesses both individually and collectively by connecting businesses to resources and capital, enhancing the look and feel of retail districts, and attracting visitors through joint marketing efforts.

The Great Falls National Historical Park is a tremendous neighborhood asset that brings visitors from around the country into the Great Falls Neighborhood on a daily basis. However, the neighborhood is not yet fully capturing the potential economic benefit of the National Park. This strategy seeks to better position the neighborhood to realize these economic benefits while also enhancing the options and experience of visitors to the National Park.

There are a number of other parks and recreational assets in the neighborhood that suffer from under-utilization and are in significant need of improvement. This strategy looks to improve quality of life for neighborhood residents and give them more opportunities for living healthy lifestyles by making these improvements and upgrades to the neighborhood’s parks and green spaces so that they are inclusive, healthy places.

Despite working consistently, Great Falls residents generally earn relatively low wages. Helping residents access higher wage jobs has major potential to transform the neighborhood. This strategy seeks to achieve this through education and training, partnerships with employers, and labor rights organizing.

With the neighborhood attracting tremendous levels of investment and development, community leaders have an important role to play in helping to define and facilitate future large-scale economic development projects in the neighborhood. This strategy aims first to cultivate and maintain a policy and planning environment that promotes positive, equitable redevelopment.

Given its density, the Great Falls Neighborhood has great potential to be a walkable, bikeable neighborhood. Unfortunately, the neighborhood currently lacks critical pedestrian and cycling safety infrastructure to fully achieve this potential. This strategy looks to change that.