Crandall Arambula’s innovative and transparent process creates plan support.

Crandall Arambula employs a systematic—‘Start’, ‘Design’, and ‘Implement’ three-step approach that is driven by an inclusive and transparent public engagement process. The process allows us to build public, private, and political support while keeping projects on schedule and within budget.

“They have a public involvement
process that comes as close to
perfect as one can expect.”

Loretta Daniel
Principal Planner
City of Aurora, Colorado

START

At Crandall Arambula, we believe that successful planning and design must evolve from a clear understanding of client needs.

• From the beginning of a client relationship, we listen carefully. We ensure that all stakeholders— community members, developers, boards and commissions, and elected officials issues, concerns, vision, and ideas are identified and addressed.

• Together, we establish meaningful goals and formulate a process for developing and evaluating innovative and implementable solutions that are always unique to each community’s physical context, history, demographics, economic conditions, and vision and goals for growth.

DESIGN

Crandall Arambula brings the following key factors to all planning and design efforts, setting our firm apart from the competition.

• The firm gives clients maximum value for their investment— through our depth of experience and research, we know what works and what does not.

• The firm is multi-disciplinary— we understand and have prepared all planning, urban design, and architectural components of a site, building, street, park, plaza, center, neighborhood, or corridor.

• All of our plans and designs are innovative yet realistic. Every project the firm completes is rooted in our expertise with the market-driven fundamentals of successful urban places.

• We never offer ‘cookie-cutter’ solutions. All concepts, plans, and designs are crafted to meet the unique needs of each city, district, corridor, or neighborhood.

IMPLEMENT

The firm’s plans are successful because they are adopted and built.

• We guarantee that plans will not sit on a shelf gathering dust.

• All of our plans have a focus on forging successful public-private partnerships. We provide implementation strategies that leverage significant private sector return on investment on any public investment costs required to ‘prime the pump’.

• We focus on short-term investments that will result in sustainable growth. By concentrating on implementation from ‘day one’ of project initiation, we guarantee that significant positive change will occur within five years of plan adoption.

We strive to lift the many diverse voices of the community.

Crandall Arambula is experienced in strategic communications, messaging, and telling the project’s story, establishing a base for authentic community engagement.

• We are experienced in establishing clear, concise messaging that educates and acknowledges community concerns and challenges.

• We create a welcoming environment where communities, stakeholders, residents, and businesses have the information and tools needed to fully participate in a successful planning process.

• Successful engagement means the community can see how and where their input is or is not reflected in plans and designs.

When planning community engagement activities, we create events and activities that are uniquely appealing, interactive, and accessible to all people: communities of color, and people of different ages, abilities, and incomes. As necessary, Crandall Arambula can provide translations and interpreters in multiple languages as needed for culturally diverse audiences.

With inclusivity at the forefront of all the activities we do and materials we create, our goal is to collaborate with historically underrepresented communities in meaningful ways, including going to where the people are, listening and responding to their unique needs and desires, and speaking their language.

An informed and educated public always makes the right decision.

Crandall Arambula follows an innovative, open, and transparent public process during each project. We organize and conduct all meetings and workshops to ensure that we gain a clear understanding of the public’s views and integrate that feedback into the plan.

Regular, informed involvement helps stakeholders and the public have a complete understanding of the project and keeps the project moving forward. We use a balloting process to ensure that all stakeholders and citizens—not just the most vocal—are heard. Adhering to this proven process ensures that the plan is supported by the community and is politically defensible.

“In leading Knoxville to a clear vision for its downtown, Crandall Arambula deftly managed a combination of meetings and candid ‘off-the-record’ discussions with different politicians, stakeholders and smaller groups, including each of the mayoral candidates at the time. As a result, hundreds participated in the process and the final proposals were both visionary and realistic.”

Marleen Davis, FAIA
Professor & Former Dean
University of Tennessee
College of Architecture

Meeting Translated Materials and Translation Services

Community-Based Organization (CBO) Collaboration

Whether conducting research, creating materials, promoting key messages, or providing engagement activities, we communicate information in clear, concise plain language. From our experience, the best way to do this is by incorporating pictures, and graphics along with words free of planning or architecture jargon.

• We utilize all forms of communication– written, verbal, digital, pictorial, and video.

• All products that we produce will incorporate any existing client and project branding and style guidelines and follow plain language guidance.

We understand that in some instances it is important to enter into partnerships with Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) to further foster meaningful public participation from racially and ethnically diverse communities that have not typically engaged with local governments or trust traditional engagement methods due to cultural, socioeconomic, and language barriers.

• We can collaborate and provide support for these CBOs to organize events, focus groups, social media campaigns, or other types of targeted public engagement activities.

• Crandall Arambula provides CBOs materials, advice, and technical information to support public engagement activities.

Our training courses convert skeptics to advocates.

Crandall Arambula’s educational training courses give participants a theoretical grounding and hands-on experience with the opportunities and challenges of city planning. The sessions, which can be a few hours long or full-day workshops, are useful for:

• Community citizens

• Elected officials

• City staff

• Organizations and interest groups

ACADEMY COURSES

• Transit System Development

• TOD Planning

• Mobility Oriented Districts

• Increasing Bike Ridership

• Fixing Cities

• Essential Design Guidelines

• Understanding Design Review

• Creating Developer Interest

• Taming the Highway

Time-sensitive issues can be resolved through a streamlined planning intervention.

Crandall Arambula works closely with communities to develop responsible solutions to immediate development pressures that, though they may meet the letter of the law, do not support the community’s vision for creating compact, pedestrian-friendly, and livable neighborhoods.

Within two to six months, we become familiar with the community, develop alternatives, and refine the best design into a concept-level plan. Our quick response is community CPR.

REPRESENTATIVE CITIES

• Portland, Oregon

• Salem, Oregon

• Ontario, Oregon

• Albany, Oregon

• Ashland, Oregon

• Astoria, Oregon

• Gresham, Oregon

• La Grande, Oregon

• Medford, Oregon

• Oregon City, Oregon

• Springfield, Oregon