Homepage concept by Atelier Vivance for the City of Saugatuck Website RFP. Not an official City website.
Season preview: How it answers the RFP
City of Saugatuck, established 1868

Welcome to the City of Saugatuck

Autumn in Saugatuck

Two brush & leaf pickups left this year. Find your date below, or search the City site.

Design note 1 · The site knows the season. The photo, headline and “This season” panel change automatically by date: no staff time, no “Spring” banner in October. Use the switch above to preview.

This week in Saugatuck

What’s next for you

Design note 2 · Enter once, show everywhere. These tiles read from the same calendars staff already keep (trash, brush & leaf, meetings), so they are always current. Today they use the City’s published 2026 schedules.

Next trash pickup

…

Brush & leaf pickup

…

Next public meeting

…

Sources: 2026 and 2027 Recycling & Trash Collection Calendars (Republic Services) · 2026 Brush / Leaf Pick Up schedule · City meetings calendar. Dates shown in Saugatuck time.

AlertsPolling place change for the November 3 election: vote at the Women’s Club, 303 Butler Street. Polls close at 8:00 pm. Election detailsGet City eNews & alerts
Example alertHow a road closure or beach advisory would appear: dated, expiring automatically, and sent to subscribers by email or text.

News & notices

From City Hall

Design note 5 · News that expires on time. Staff set a publish and an expiry date once; notices drop off the homepage by themselves and stay in the archive.

This season

Good to know this autumn

    Open to everyone

    Upcoming meetings

      Meetings at City Hall are hybrid. Join in person or on Zoom: Meeting ID 269 857 2603, or call (312) 626-6799. Open Zoom

      Design note 3 · Meetings file themselves. Agendas, packets, minutes and video attach to each meeting and archive automatically, replacing 25 separate year-pages on today’s site.

      Explore

      About 500 acres of dunes, beach & parks

      From the Lake Michigan shore to the river downtown, Saugatuck’s parks belong to everyone. Pick a place to see it on the map.

      Map of Saugatuck: Lake Michigan and Oval Beach to the west, the Kalamazoo River and downtown to the east, Kalamazoo Lake to the south. Lake MichiganKalamazoo RiverOxbow LagoonKalamazoo Lake

      Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

      Design note 6 · A map with no map bill. Drawn from OpenStreetMap as one 22 KB file: no map-service fees, no tracking, works with a keyboard and a screen reader through the list. Parks staff edit each place’s hours and prices in one form.

      Open government

      Plans & budgets

      Design note 4 · One library, fully searchable. The roughly 1,200 PDFs on today’s site (our count, October 2026) move into one document library, tagged by department and year, and the search above reads inside them.

      Concept · not the official City site

      How this concept answers your RFP

      A working homepage concept by Atelier Vivance for the City’s Website Redesign & Development RFP. Everything above is how saugatuckcity.com could look. Its facts, dates and links come from the City’s current public website. Use the season buttons and Show design notes in the top bar to explore it.

      Task-based navigation
      “What do you need today?” and six task tiles (pay, trash, meetings, beach, forms, contact) come first, so nobody needs to know which department does what.
      Site and document search
      Try it: this demo searches 129 City pages, documents and linked services (34 of them PDFs) by title and keyword, and still finds “permit” when someone types “permt”. The full build also reads inside every PDF.
      A distinctive Saugatuck design
      The photo, headline, colour and “This season” panel change by date on their own. The parks map is drawn from OpenStreetMap, with seven places described from the City’s own park pages.
      Less repetitive staff work
      Trash, brush & leaf and meeting panels read from the schedules the City already publishes, so staff enter a date once. In the full build, notices also leave the homepage on the expiry date staff set.
      Meetings and calendar
      Upcoming meetings come from the City calendar. In the full build each meeting holds its agenda, packet, minutes and video, and moves to the archive by itself.
      Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)
      This page scores 100 out of 100 on Google Lighthouse’s automated accessibility check; today’s homepage scores 79 (measured 24 October 2026). Automated checks cover only part of WCAG, so the full build adds keyboard and screen-reader testing by hand.
      Phones and tablets
      The layout works from a small phone to a wide desktop screen, and the map can be used through its list with a keyboard or a screen reader.
      City ownership
      We propose WordPress, which is open source. The City owns its content, files, data and domain, and can export them or change providers at any time.

      Questions about this concept: Fasih Mazhar, Atelier Vivance · fasih@ateliervivance.com · ateliervivance.com