INTRODUCTION
The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire has proposed a new Confluence Center Project as a community arts center, commercial retail complex, and university student housing. Clear Vision has been tasked with providing a collaborative effort among local developers, UW-Eau Claire, and the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center in constructing this project. This lab contains the first step in the Confluence Center proposal, showing a basic look at the site and its surrounding area using GIS software.
METHODS
In Lab 3, the Confluence Project was identified and the surrounding areas studied to familiarize all feature sets within the Eau Claire County and City databases. Public land survey knowledge of the surrounding area was acquired by identifying and mapping civil divisions (city, town, and village), census boundaries (block groups and tracts), city parcels, and zoning and voting districts. This knowledge was demonstrated using GIS techniques in land management and administration to prepare a spatial basis of Eau Claire County/City and the proposed site of the Confluence Center.
First, digitizing a polygon feature class of the Confluence Project required working through ArcCatalog and creating this new feature class within a new geodatabase. Using Public Land Survey System from Eau Claire County and Eau Claire City geodatabases coupled with City of Eau Claire Web GIS data from http://eauclairecitywi.wgxtreme.com/ produced the following legal descriptions of both parcels of land the new Confluence Project will occupy.
Figure 1:
Parcel legal descriptions of the proposed site of the Confluence Project site
Next, a familiarity of the public land system survey was gained and a large-scale landscape poster was produced using the 2013 Eau Claire County and Eau Claire City databases including six maps (civil divisions, census boundaries, PLSS features, parcel data, zoning and voting districts); All included titles, legends, scales, north arrow, and source while maintaining an aesthetically-appealing color scheme and layout.
RESULTS
The proposed site is situated within the city limits of Eau Claire as shown by the Civil Divisions map. Located just downtown from the current campus, the site is surrounded by a higher percentage of young residents indicated by the census boundary map. The PLSS features map shows off to the 8th of a section just where this proposed site is located, while the Parcel Data map distinctly shows the parcels and centerlines of the surrounding area. The zoning and voting districts also show the surrounding boundaries.
Figure 2: Proposed site of the Confluence Project and Eau Claire County and City boundaries
Illustrated by each map, the proposed site of the Confluence Project lies within a single division, boundary, section, and district. Undivided by boundaries, this proposed site next to campus is unlikely to face delays because of the lack of need to approve or reestablish boundary lines or districts. In fact, the parcels have already been purchased as indicated by Figure 1, and construction has begun.
SOURCES
City of Eau Claire. (2013). Retrieved from http://ci.eau-claire.wi.us/
Eau Claire County. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.co.eau-claire.wi.us/
