MFA Celebrates National Community Planning Month

Site Redevelopment Planning

Every community has places with unrealized potential—underutilized parcels, vacant buildings, or sites burdened by contamination. Site redevelopment planning helps turn those properties into productive assets that drive economic vitality and reflect a community’s vision for the future.

Brownfield Revitalization

Cleaning up the past to make room for the future. Planners assess environmental conditions and coordinate cleanup strategies that prepare sites for safe, sustainable reuse, bridging remediation with reinvestment.

Reuse Visioning

Great planning starts with imagination. Planners work with stakeholders to envision new life for keystone sites such as former industrial zones, rail yards, or waterfronts. Through collaboration and community dialogue, they help shape shared visions that inspire action and attract investment.

Feasibility Studies

Before plans become projects, planners evaluate market demand, infrastructure capacity, and zoning compatibility. These insights help ensure redevelopment decisions are grounded in reality and aligned with community goals.

Master Planning

A master plan is where vision meets design and strategy meets action. Planners bring together land use, housing, transportation, open space, and community amenities into a cohesive framework that supports livability, sustainability, and economic opportunity.

But physical planning is only one part of the story. True resilience requires pairing design with strategy. That’s where economic development strategizing comes in.

Economic Development Strategizing

Planners work with communities to craft long-term strategies that strengthen local economies and build capacity for growth. By combining economic data with on-the-ground insight, they help communities make informed decisions that attract investment, create jobs, and support equitable development.

Economic Base Analysis

Understanding a community’s economic foundation starts with data. Planners study industry clusters, employment trends, and demographic shifts to identify opportunities for diversification and sustainable growth.

Target Industry Identification

By pinpointing sectors with strong potential for innovation, investment, and job creation, planners help communities focus their resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.

Resilience Planning

Planning for the future means preparing for change. Planners help communities diversify their economies and build resilience to emerging challenges—from automation to climate impacts—ensuring that growth remains adaptable and inclusive.

Grant Funding Acquisition Support

Even the best plans need resources to move from vision to implementation. Planners help communities secure funding to make their economic development initiatives a reality.

Grant Research & Strategy

Effective funding begins with strategy. Planners identify federal, state, and philanthropic funding sources aligned with local goals and project priorities. This early coordination helps communities target the most viable opportunities rather than chasing every available source.

Proposal Development

Planners write clear, compelling grant applications with defined objectives, measurable outcomes, and demonstrated community impact. Careful attention to detail and storytelling helps position projects for competitive funding success.

Compliance & Reporting

Once funding is awarded, planners support post-award management by tracking outcomes, maintaining compliance, and submitting required documentation to ensure long-term success.

Climate Planning

Climate planners help communities prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change. Climate planning typically focuses on two key areas:

• Resilience: A community’s ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover from climate-related hazards such as extreme heat, flooding, wildfire smoke, and drought.

• Mitigation: Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

Through climate planning, communities assess local hazards like sea-level rise and extreme heat, measure greenhouse gas emissions, gather input from residents, and develop strategies that balance resilience and mitigation. Climate planning may result in a stand-alone Climate Action Plan or be integrated into broader efforts such as comprehensive or long-range plans. At MFA, we’ve seen that effective and lasting climate planning is grounded in the best-available science, community priorities, and technical realities.

Climate Planning in Action

MFA helps cities and counties across Washington, urban and rural, large and small, meet new Growth Management Act requirements by developing climate elements for their comprehensive plans.

How we do it: 

• Conduct and use data-driven inputs like GHG inventories and climate hazard vulnerability assessments

• Engage communities and stakeholders to shape priorities

• Apply lessons learned and evolving best practices and guidance from across the state

• Identify and prioritize strategies for emissions reduction and climate resilience based on local needs

• Create final climate elements that are clear, actionable, and integrated into the rest of the comprehensive plan

Through this work, MFA helps communities translate statewide climate goals into practical, locally driven actions that strengthen resilience and sustainability for years to come.

Strategic Planning

Planners can also work with organizations to identify their vision or “north star” and chart the steps needed to achieve it. Strategic Plans typically span a timeframe of three to five years and are a multi-step process that starts with an honest reflection of what is working well and what needs to be improved, often through a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis.

The process also includes defining organizational values, setting clear goals, outlining actions, and determining the resources and partnerships required for success. Strategic planning helps organizations stay focused and adaptable while remaining aligned with their mission and responsive to change.

Strategic Planning in Action

MFA works with governments, utilities, ports, and other agencies to articulate a unified vision of the future, collaborating with stakeholders, elected officials, and staff to identify tactics that will help communities and organizations achieve their maximum potential. 

How we do it: 

• Research trends and changes in the field/sector of interest

• Engage leadership and staff in an internal assessment of strengths, challenges, opportunities and threats

• Design facilitated process in which leadership and staff collaborate to identify vision, mission, values, and goals, as well as strategies and tactics to accomplish goals

• Discuss and prioritize Year One actions.

Through strategic planning, MFA helps organizations move from reflection to focused action, creating plans that are both aspirational and practical.