Introduction
The Confluence Project
The Eau Claire Confluence Project is a joint effort between public and private entities to invest approximately $50 million dollars into mixed development located in downtown Eau Claire. As it currently stands this project would center around a 150,000 sq. foot community arts center and would also include retail/commercial space, public parking, and university student housing.
Location
The site being considered for this venture is known as "the Haymarket site." It is situated at the confluence of the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers along Eau Claire Street and Graham Avenue. Two buildings (the Formers Store and Market Square) along with a current parking lot would need to be removed in order to make way for the new development.
Principal Stakeholders
As a public/private partnership, the stakeholders bring together the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the Eau Claire Regional Arts Council from the public sector as well as Commonweal Development Corp. and Market & Johnson Inc. from the private sector. The ownership of the Haymarket Property is currently owned by the principal stakeholders (outside of the Arts Council) under the umbrella of Haymarket Concepts LLC.
Report Objective
Any time such a large venture is considered, there are many aspects to analyze in order to ascertain impact, potential, and feasibility. Through mapping techniques and the use of geographic information systems important information can be placed in the hands of interested parties. Toward that end, I will produce six maps portraying various regional and political boundaries for consideration.
Links to Confluence Center Information
http://volumeone.org/news/1/posts/2014/01/21/6112_county_board_will_pledge_3_5m_to_confluence_if
http://www.uwec.edu/News/more/confluenceprojectFAQs.htm
http://www.eauclairearts.com/confluence/
Methods
Data CollectionThe first step in producing informative maps is the collection and organization of data. Information about political and regional boundaries was provided to me from city and county of Eau Claire. Importing the data from the files I had been given into ArcMAP allowed me to build a geodatabase in which to house the relevant data. From there I would be able to organize data into pertinent layers for the purpose of map production.
Confluence Center Site Specification
In addition to the data sets given to me, it was also necessary to produce a template specifying the exact area of the Confluence Center. Producing this template is an extremely important step because each map should make it very clear to the reader how the other information presented on the map relates to the specific item of importance (The Confluence Center).
To do this, I first added World Imagery as my base map. Secondly, I added the "proposed site" feature class to my base map. This feature class would act as my template for all subsequent maps. In order for it to serve that purpose, I had to correlate the legal parcels specified for the Confluence Project location to imported parcel area data from the city of Eau Claire.
Digitizing Confluence Center Site
After using the Identify tool to locate the parcels for the confluence center site, I needed to differentiate the two parcels from all of the other parcels represented on the map. To do this, I turned on the Edit toolbar . In this toolbar, there is a Snapping toolbar. One important part of digitizing is making sure you maintain consistency in your maps. By selecting End snapping and Vertex Snapping, I ensured that the vertices and nodes I would build to differentiate the Confluence Center Site parcels would match the vertices and nodes in the parcel layer. The outlined parcels can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: This figure shows the outlined parcels for the proposed Confluence Center. Using the snapping tool, this outline would serve as my template for the confluence center site on my subsequent maps.
Map Building
Now that I had established access to my data sets in a geodatabase and built a template for th Confluence Center site, I could simply import the necessary data into newly inserted data frames. Separate data frames allows you to build several maps utilizing the same geodatabase. This is especially useful in a case such as this where 6 similar maps are being produced of one site. In order to stay organized I renamed each new data frame according to the details of the map. The 6 maps, and thus the 6 titles of my data frames were as follows:
- Civil Divisions (map showing the boundaries of cities, towns and villages in the area)
- In this case, no villages were visible on the map so I removed the data from my dataset. Had I left it, it would have been possible to confuse the readers. This is especially true due to the fact that the world imagery is visible behind the slightly transparent civil divisions data. It could be assumed that colors showing through from the world imagery represented non-existent villages.
- Census Boundaries (map showing population density per square mile in census tracts)
- The important steps for this map involved normalizing the data. Had I just separated tracts by population, a very different picture would be painted. Normalizing by square mile paints a better picture of where population is centered.
- Secondly, I had to adjust the number breaks in my legend to allow for greater clarity. This involved eliminating decimal places and placing my breaks at easy to follow numbers.
- PLSS Features (map showing quarter - quarter township boundaries around the site)
- Townships are approximately 360 sq. foot parcels of land. The grids in this map are technically 1/16th of a township. Due to the legal definitions attached to land and properties. It is important to understand this aspect.
- Eau Claire City Parcels (map showing exact parcels of Confluence Center site and region)
- Also having to do with legal definitions, this map outlines the exact parcels of the proposed Confluence Center site.
- Zoning (map specifying the different zones of property around the Confluence Center site)
- Properties are broken down into classifications based on their usage. Because their are many different specific classifications of sites, for the purpose of this map, I combined data into 6 generalized classes (Industrial, Central Business District, Residential, Commercial, Public, and Transportation). This will make it much easier for readers to analyze. Too many colors are difficult to differentiate.
- In Symbology, I also manually changed the labels to my new grouped classifications.
- Also, I eliminated data for "Transportation" parcels because none were visible on the map. This helps avoids confusion for readers.
- This map would like nicer if roads were accounted for in some kind of classification or otherwise differentiated. There are places on the map that are not consistent with the top layer as a result. The World Imagery below is visible along roadways.
- Voting Districts (map showing the breakdown of voting districts around the site)
- Because this map did not require a legend, it was important that I specify the Confluence Center site with a label. Because of the many numbers on this map, it meant adjusting the X, Y coordinates to place the label in a place where it would not obscure numbers.
Figure 2: The following maps correspond with the specifications above by title.
Source: City of Eau Claire and County of Eau Claire, 2013
Generalized Methods
Some aspects of cartography were employed on multiple maps. I will list them here for your consideration.
- Background color (white) on legends, scale bars, and north arrows for clarity.
- Adjusting the scale bar to familiar and whole numbers for clarity.
- Titles above maps were produced in ArcMAP.
- Transparency levels were adjusted to varying degrees to provide the layering affect of the World Imagery below the map data.
Legal Descriptions
Using the Property Assessment Search website for Eau Claire, I gathered the necessary information to build a basic legal description of the two parcels for the proposed Confluence Center as seen in Figure 3. This also included providing a snapshot of the parcels with labels. Once again, by building an initial template, this was very easy process. All I had to do was add the labels.
Figure 3: This figure shows the compilation of legal descriptions for the two proposed parcels for the Confluence Center project.
Conclusion
Using geographic information skills and principals of map making allows you to make detailed, accurate representations of many different types of data. The six maps produced for this technical report are just one example of what can be done. Due to the many different types of political and geographical boundaries and classifications, this information is not just "nice to be able to show" but a real necessity for decision makers.
