The City of Wilmington’s final pub-hosted planning outreach session takes place Thursday evening, capping a week of similar discussions at a variety of Wilmington bars and restaurants.
 
The intent of what city planners have called Planning on Tap is to get input for the city’s comprehensive planning process from a more diverse – and potentially younger – population than have been showing up at neighborhood meetings.
 
Planning on Tap winds up Thursday 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Goat and Compass on North Fourth Street downtown. Anyone is welcome to attend, said senior long-range planner Christine Hughes.

Other sessions have been held this week at Dockside, Tazy's, Hops and Husk. A morning session took place at Jester's Cafe.
 
“Our steering committee members have been running these meetings,” Hughes said. “They have not been as well-attended as I had hoped, but the folks who have come out have been really interested and have had a lot to say.
 
“We’ve had interesting, different feedback [from attendees at the Planning on Tap meetings] than we have been hearing at the neighborhood sessions, which tend to bring up very similar themes and concepts,” Hughes added. “For instance, one person [at a Planning on Tap meeting] suggested that Wilmington should shrink its boundaries.”
 
Hughes said that Planning on Tap was one of “probably 20 ways we’re trying to collect public input” for the comprehensive plan. Committee members held a meeting on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus Wednesday to try and capture the perspectives of the UNCW community.
 
“I was disappointed at the numbers of people who attended, but we did have a good conversation,” Hughes said. “We’ve been hearing that there are not a lot of jobs for UNCW graduates who would like to stay in town, and we heard some specific examples. It was important to reach that audience.”