Rediscover Historic Downtown Spanish Fork

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Spanish Fork is 50 miles south of Salt Lake City adjacent to the city of Provo. The city experienced rapid growth and suburbanization with population expanding by more than 200 percent in the last two decades. In the process, the downtown's original center faded from the community’s attention as a preeminent destination and became a place most often seen from behind the wheel as people drove through. Investment shifted and began concentrating outside the historic downtown, leaving the modest, locally owned shops of Main Street to sustain their businesses with few resources at hand. Spanish Fork requested CPAT help with revitalizing their Main Street.

The Spanish Fork CPAT worked with city leaders, downtown business and property owners, and community members to create a unified vision and identity for Spanish Fork's Main Street. The unified vision was the basis for the team's implementation action plan to set community members on a path to achieving a revitalized, authentic, and sustainable downtown. The report lays out the team's twelve recommended implementation strategies with specific steps necessary to catalyze revitalization and rediscovery of Spanish Fork's gem, the historic downtown.

Meet the Team

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Team Leader

Deborah Meihoff, AICP

For more than 20 years Deb Meihoff has devoted her career to revitalizing and developing communities. She is principal and owner of Communitas, a consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon. Meihoff brings people and teams together to collaboratively explore problems and solutions, tackle cities' economic challenges, and find the key steps to make great places happen. Her experience in economic development, planning, policy, redevelopment, and construction gives her the ability to connect community goals with marketplace realities. Meihoff holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from the University of New Orleans and received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Meihoff may be found in the bike lanes of Portland or exploring coffee shops around the globe.

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Team Member

Andrew Vesselinovitch, AICP

Andrew Vesselinovitch has headed the bicycle programs for the New York City departments of planning and transportation, served on the San Francisco Bicycle Advisory Committee, and managed the Bloomingdale Trail for The Trust for Public Land and Ross Barney Architects. Vesselinovitch also served as project manager for the Chicago Riverwalk. He expanded New York City's "bike week" to a month, introduced the first bilingual promotion campaign, and increased the distribution of free maps. There was a more than 20 percent increase in bicycling during his tenure. Vesselinovitch is a self-described "working cyclist." Born and raised in Chicago, he returned to study and practice architecture. His thesis was a proposal to turn a wide segment of Chicago's Broadway into a multi-use street.

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Team Member

Sean Daly, AICP

Sean Daly is a senior transportation planner at Iteris, Inc. Over his 15-year career, Daly has worked on wide range of transportation planning activities on the local, regional, state, and federal level in the public sector and in professional consulting. These include multimodal and goods movement transportation studies, intersection and corridor analysis, state and federal transportation policy and finance and data analytics for transportation performance measurement and evaluation. He Is the Professional Development Officer for the Louisiana Chapter of APA and a certified Professional Transportation Planner. He serves on the Lafayette Parish Board of Zoning Adjustment. He is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, and received his master's in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Team Member

Robert A. Simons

Robert A. Simons is a professor at the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. He is also the faculty advisor for the Certificate Program in Real Estate Development and Finance at CSU. He is the former director of the Master of Urban Planning, Design and Development program. Simons was a 2005 Fulbright Scholar at Wits University in Johannesburg. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in City and Regional Planning. He also holds Master of Regional Planning and Master of Science in Economics degrees, both from UNC. He is the author of Turning Brownfields into Greenbacks and When Bad Things Happen to Good Property. His latest book on adaptive reuse is forthcoming from Kent State University Press. He also serves as associate editor for the Journal of Sustainable Real Estate.

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Team Member

Robyn Eason, AICP

Robyn Eason has 10 years of professional experience in urban planning, neighborhood revitalization, and sustainability. She manages and directs the certification process for LEED 2009 for Neighborhood Development at the Green Building Certification Institute, while also performing reviews and quality control responsibilities for the LEED Building Design and Construction Rating System. Previously Eason worked in the private sector to determine future development scenarios and develop implementation strategies to guide market and economic transformation. Eason holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from The Catholic University of America and a master's in City and Regional Planning from Clemson University. She is a member of the Urban Land Institute and the International Society of Sustainability Professionals.

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