TPL 2009-2010 | Environmental Funders Network

Trust for Public Land

Purpose: To embed the previously completed Penobscot Valley Community Greenprint in planning, conservation and quality of place efforts by convening stakeholders, training the communities in the use of the Greenprint and creating coalitions of NGOs with complimentary missions to focus their work in the region. (2010) To create regional and municipal coalitions working in partnership with conservation and economic development interests to alter approach to protecting quality of place. (2009)

2011 Award: $30,000

2010 Award: $15,000

2009 Award: $100,000 1 year request Read the 2009 Proposal (PDF)

TPL - a boat on a lake, Bridgton ME

The Maine CommunityScape Initiative is an integrated suite of services: Greenprinting, finance and transactions. Working with The Trust for Public Land, (TPL) communities can begin to craft the critical balance between built and open spaces that will drive our future and protect our quality of life.

“Greenprinting” is TPL’s system for helping communities to identify and prioritize the key attributes of their landscape that make it special to them. Through stakeholder meetings, interviews and surveys, TPL gathers “soft” data: what mattes most to people among their many choices? Is it walkable trails? A farm? A special view? Is it safe drinking water, or a favorite swimming hole?

Once a community has ranked its preferences, those “soft” values are married to hard data about the land. Through award-winning GIS Greenprinting software, the community’s aspirations are made manifest in the form of maps and parcel data layers. The result is more than a map. A “Greenprint” is a portrait of a certain “quality of place.” Rising to the surface are the specific attributes that draw residents to live there, a vivid depiction of community consensus. These digital maps are a tool. The final step of the Greenprinting process is the most critical: Action planning.

TPL works with the community to identify and articulate specific, attainable goals and the steps needed to accomplish them. Updating comprehensive plans, adapting zoning, initiating parks and trails programs, passing local bonds – a Greenprint is a complement to all of these. The scalable nature of these maps promotes collaboration and awareness across the political boundaries between towns and cities.

TPL’s Conservation Finance team is a national leader in building local capacity for open space funding. To complete transactions, TPL secures financing from a wide variety of public and private sources. Municipalities appreciate that TPL can often secure transaction funding and provide the extra staff, financial expertise, and legal support needed to move quickly. TPL coordinates due diligence to ensure that price and condition are acceptable.

Any single community may apply one or all of these tools to successfully chart a sustainable future. However, sprawl and the landscape know no municipal boundary. No single community’s efforts at planning can hope to address landscape-level issues like water quality protection, infrastructure planning, commercial and residential development, or habitat protection. The Maine CommunityScape Initiative proposes to bring towns together in regional communities to confront and overcome the challenge of planning for a shared future. Beginning with a unified, sensible vision for land use across the region, TPL can couple that vision to its finance and transaction skills to help make that vision attainable.

Partnering with the Loon Echo Land Trust, TPL hopes to replicate the success of the Penobscot Valley Community Greenprint in the Lakes Region of southern Maine. Prospective town partners include Naples, Bridgton, Raymond, Harrison, Denmark, Sebago and Casco. Other anticipated partners are the Portland Water District, GPCoG, Lakes Environmental Association, Lakes Region Chamber, Beginning With Habitat and the Quebec-Labrador Foundation.