Preview based on the posted agenda. Official minutes have not yet been published.
Two Rivers is set to kick off its public “visioning” process for the former Hamilton property, starting with a history-and-goals overview and a first round of community idea-gathering. No decisions are scheduled—this meeting is about shaping what options the City develops next.
Key Decisions
The City will start collecting and organizing resident ideas for what the former Hamilton site could become—early input that can steer what redevelopment options even get put on the table later.
The agenda includes a review of “community input and survey process,” which is where residents should push for basics the City hasn’t consistently made clear elsewhere: how feedback will be counted, summarized, and used.
A follow-up public meeting is scheduled for Feb. 25 at the library—important for anyone who can’t make a Saturday morning meeting but still wants their input on record.
Public Input
No public comments or communications recorded for this meeting.
Agenda Items
Review of site history and project goals
Staff is expected to walk through what the Hamilton property has been, and what the City says it wants out of this process. This matters because “goals” set the boundaries—what gets treated as realistic versus what gets dismissed early. Residents should listen for what’s missing (like cleanup constraints and who pays for what), because those details often decide the outcome more than the brainstorming does.
Discussion of City demographic and economic trends
The City plans to frame the Hamilton site conversation around local population and economic trends. That framing can be useful, but it can also quietly steer the conversation toward certain “marketable” outcomes before residents have weighed in on what they actually want. If the City uses trend data to narrow options, residents should ask what assumptions are being made and whether alternatives are being fairly considered.
The agenda calls for an outline of how the visioning process will work. This is where process details matter: how many meetings, what the timeline is, and who ultimately decides what gets built. Residents should watch for whether the City commits to publishing a clear summary of input and a transparent path from “ideas” to actual recommendations.
Community ideation and discussion of site concepts
This is the core public-facing part of the kickoff: residents will be asked to generate and discuss concepts for the site. The stakes are high because the former Hamilton property is a major redevelopment opportunity that could shape nearby neighborhoods, traffic, and the look and feel of that area for years. The key question is whether this is open-ended input—or whether the City is already steering toward a short list of preferred outcomes.
The City plans to review how it will gather input and run a survey. That’s a make-or-break detail: if the survey is vague, hard to find, or not reported out clearly, the “visioning” risks becoming a box-checking exercise instead of a real guide for decisions. Residents should ask how results will be published (raw counts and themes), and how the City will show what it changed based on what it heard.
Next meeting – February 25, 2026, 5:30 PM, Lester Public Library
A second public meeting is scheduled for Feb. 25 at the library. This matters for access: a weekday evening option may bring in residents who can’t attend a Saturday morning session. If the City is serious about broad input, it should make sure the Feb. 25 meeting is promoted clearly and that materials are posted ahead of time.