Fulton, Kentucky
Placemaking Playbook
About the Project
The City of Fulton has partnered with Atlas Community Studios, a firm specializing in strategic planning and place-based economic development, to create a placemaking playbook related to:
- Housing
- Economic Development
- Marketing
The Fulton, Kentucky Playbook includes an analysis of key trends, opportunities, and challenges the city faces to achieve a prosperous economic and social future. Quantitative research is combined with feedback from stakeholder input to ensure that Fulton’s strategic priorities reflect the community’s collective vision and goals.
This landing page provides a high-level overview of the plan, but you can read the full PDF plan (excluding appendices) by clicking the button below.
Planning Process
The City of Fulton established a project steering committee of 24 individuals with backgrounds ranging from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to help guide the planning process
Thank you to the following individuals for volunteering your time and effort in this process!
| Mike Gunn | Mark Welch | Shirley Janowski | Shannon Walton |
| Darcy Linn | Milton Dean | Amanda Morris | Lew Jeton |
| Jim Martin | Nathan Lamb | Kay Martin | Susan Engle |
| Luke Craddock | Harrison Hawks | John Clark | Ashley Wiseman |
| Derrick Jackson | Kenny Etherton | Sam Hancock | Daniel Thomas |
| Jordan Barnes | Jessie Webb | Robert Rushing | Billy Milliken |
The Atlas team facilitated two public visioning sessions, one in-person during the site visit and one online via Zoom.
The project team also hosted three focus groups and a handful of stakeholder interviews related to housing, economic development, and marketing.
An online community survey generated 80 responses
Informed by the community assessment findings, the playbook identifies strategic opportunity areas and recommends partnerships, funding opportunities, and best practices and resources
Features high-level quantitative trends for Fulton as compared to Fulton County, the state of Kentucky, and the United States
Incorporates key themes from the stakeholder input to describe Fulton’s assets and challenges related to housing, economic development, and marketing
Community Assessment
The Community Assessment report contains quantitative research combined with comprehensive stakeholder outreach to properly identify key trends and challenges the city of Fulton faces related to housing, economic development, and marketing.
Key Trends & Challenges
- Blighted properties, aged housing stock, and unaffordable residential units are contributing to a complex housing market in Fulton.
- Regional industrial development “wins” have the potential to create high quality job opportunities for Fulton residents, but the local labor market lacks the skills needed to meet employer demand
- Despite a rich history and unique identity, Fulton suffers from capacity challenges, inadequate tourism infrastructure and a lack of community pride hindering its ability to expand marketing efforts.
Playbook
Informed by the community assessment findings, the playbook identifies strategic opportunity areas and recommends partnerships, funding opportunities, and best practices and resources.
Strategic Opportunity Areas
Housing
- Address existing blight
- Prevent future blight
Economic Development
- Foster and sustain a regional workforce development system to build talent pipelines for high growth industries
- Coordinate economic and workforce development strategies with regional partners in Kentucky and Tennessee
Marketing
- Cultivate a sense of place, identity and pride among the community through expanded internal marketing and engagement opportunities
- Increase external marketing efforts to encourage year-round tourism