Ironically, the origins of the highly collaborative, citizen-led Grand Vision are found in a community disagreement over the costs and benefits of the proposed highway bypass and bridge around Traverse City. Arising from that conflict, community leaders came together in search of more collaborative solution to addressing the region's growth pains.

For more than two years, a highly diverse group of 34 leaders representing local and state government, business, environmental interests, and social services worked by consensus to develop a work plan and recruit a team of the best consultants in the country to conduct a two year planning and implementation project. When an opportunity arose to reallocate the federal transportation funds once earmarked for the highway and bridge project to this community planning process, regional leaders collaborated with Senator Carl Levin, Senator Debbie Stabenow and Representative Dave Camp to make it happen.

The consultant team hired under the $1.3 million contract included the nation's top experts in a highly interactive process called scenario planning. This approach starts with citizen planning workshops to envision different scenarios for the future, models how these scenarios will move traffic, develop land, and supply housing, and then asks the public to choose the scenario that best fits the future of the region. Consultants Robert Grow, founding chair emeritus of Envision Utah,  one of the country's most successful public involvement efforts for the development of a long-term growth strategy for a major metropolitan area and John Fregonese of Fregonese Associates, a planning firm specializing in visioning, comprehensive and small area planning, implementation strategies, and public involvement strategies, led a team that brought great expertise in organizing coalitions toward action, as well as planning and engineering the new transportation and land use solutions necessary to implement the publicly-selected growth strategy.

With these experts as resources and the committed leadership of a diverse group of local leaders, the Grand Vision was launched with tremendous public support. 15,000 people participated in workshops, served on volunteer committees, and engaged in the Grand Vision Decision, one of the largest and most successful community visioning projects in our nation's history.

The work done by the citizens and consultants can be seen in The Grand Vision Document and in other modeling work and reports produced.