FrameworkOP Comprehensive Plan

In 2022, the City of Overland Park, KS, retained Clarion Associates along with PlanningNEXT to launch a process called FrameworkOP to create a major update to its comprehensive plan. This community driven process was a detailed rewrite of the City’s 40-year-old plan to respond to current needs, shape future opportunities, integrate best practices, and build upon the City’s recent ForwardOP strategic plan. The Comprehensive Plan leveraged the vision of ForwardOP, focusing on the specific projects, policies, and programs toward achieving the City’s desire for growth. This comprehensive plan took a closer look at essential community topics such as population shifts, housing, natural resources, fiscal health, and economic trends to ensure that the City had a strong framework for realizing the community vision. This major update to the City’s comprehensive plan guided land use and policy decisions for both public and private development in the city. It reflected the community’s intentions for where and how Overland Park should grow over the next 20 or more years. The planning process included three rounds of engagement, featuring both in-person and online engagement. The first round of engagement was called “Framing our Future.” This round was designed to generate excitement about the planning process, introduce the public to the process, and gather ideas about the direction of Overland Park. These events gathered feedback from more than 400 people and provided the project team with a fuller understanding of residents’ thoughts, ideas, and concerns for the city’s future. The first round helped shape the plan’s structure and goals. The draft plan followed six high-level goals: quality of life, land use, housing, environment, economic well-being, and mobility. It created actions and policy recommendations to help the City achieve goals in these topic areas. The plan was adopted in May 2024 and received two awards: the 2024 APA Kansas Meadowlark Award and the 2024 APA Kansas Pioneer Award.