Vision 2015 links with University of Kentucky to help reshape NKY

Nearly two dozen University of Kentucky College of Design students will team up with Vision 2015 and the Catalytic Development Funding Corporation to study Northern Kentucky’s buildings and neighborhoods.

Northern Kentucky was chosen as the newest addition to UK’s College of Design’s River City Initiative program. The program is a multi-year research and design project that pushes students to work directly with neighborhoods and local governments to create projects that will directly impact the cities. Other cities, such as, Louisville and Paducah, have already seen the benefits, which include forming a 100-year plan for the growth of a gas diffusion plan in Paducah that was scheduled to be shut down.

Students will spend time at both UK’s campus and in Northern Kentucky developing projects in Covington and Newport. The students will create a planning study of the entire area the first semester and focus more on specific projects in the second semester.

Vision 2015 welcomes the students and their ideas, which falls in line with its own 10-year plan to raise economic vitality and living standards in the area through six main focus areas and connecting local organizations.

Bill Scheyer, president of Vision 2015, hopes that the partnership will bring fresh ideas to the already flourishing Vision 2015 program. “We are really excited to see what they can bring to the table,” says Scheyer. “It’s always good to see new ideas, and students are great at that.”

Besides getting a fresh set of eyes trained on the area, Vision 2015 hopes that students will solidify a partnership with UK. Vision 2015 helped create the Northern Kentucky Education Council, another avenue for extended connections between campuses across the state and their northern neighbors. “We find the most powerful tool to implement elements of the community’s plan is through collaboration and cooperation,” Scheyer says. “We try to pull in as many people as we can to help make Northern Kentucky a better place to live.”

By Evan Wallis