Union leaders discuss the state of the city at a recent meeting. Photo by Brad Theide | LINK nky contributor

The city of Union held a strategic planning session during a special meeting Monday, where leaders talked about how the city fits into the larger picture of Boone County, the Tri-State and Kentucky.

“I can tell you that our staff right now is the best it’s ever been,” Mayor Larry Solomon said at the meeting.

But the space in which that staff works, he said, needs some help, particularly in terms of suitable building spaces and properties to fully accommodate the present and future needs of the city.

” The point is that we’re running on all cylinders, but the bad news is that we’re jammed into this building,” Solomon said.

The current City of Union building, situated at 1843 Bristow Drive, is widely considered among city employees as effectively too small to serve the current and growing needs of the community. It is among several new and upcoming improvement projects the City of Union is considering.

There is also an updated plan for the Union Town Center, expanded since the previous iteration in 2000. Another project is the Union Promenade, an ongoing project that broke ground in July of 2022.

Commissioners at Monday’s meeting agreed there was some confusion about the projects that the public seems to keep running into, and how to clarify things moving forward. They mentioned how some members of the public still confuse the Union Town Center project with the Union Promenade project and vice versa.

This illustrates, commissioners agreed, that city planning is often more challenging than is immediately apparent.

Commissioners then held a brainstorming session to figure out how to be more accessible to the public, especially those with a vested interest in their local community.

Surveys and focus groups are already underway to get feedback from the public in order to give the commission a better idea of what ideas they have.

 “A survey that we did demonstrates how people want a green space but also want to include farmers markets, food trucks, and different things in these new construction projects,” City Administrator Amy Safran said.