Comments on: City Council Moves Toward Height Limits

By: Leah Gunn

Leah Gunn — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:29:56 +0000

This has been a long and complex process, beginning with the Calthorpe plan and ending with these amendments (and, I am sure many others that might be offered). It is not just the Planning Commision which is involved, but many other members of the public and concerned organizations, particularly the A2D2 Steering Committee. Council sent the document back to the Planning Commission for them to take a look to see how it fits with the new Downtown Plan. We have to be very careful about what we put in place, because we will have to live with it for a long time. No one body is the “expert”, but in the end it is Council’s responsibility to make these decisions. I applaud all those involved and thank them for their hours and hours of work. And I ESPECIALLY applaud the Chronicle for reporting this in detail. Thank you, Dave.

By: Steve Bean

Steve Bean — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:33:13 +0000

Re: Amendment 9, I’m curious whether Greden, Rapundalo, or others based their thinking on the diagonal requirement as being “unnecessarily complicated” (Dave’s wording) on the input of developers that they had consulted with, or if it was a personal assessment. If the proposed requirement was intended as a means to an end (i.e., “slender design, letting air and light through”), and was judged to be unnecessary, what is the alternative, less-complicated means to that end–or was that end judged to be unworthy?

Re: Amendment 6, would not a bank that had become (or was established as) a “third place” then be considered an active-use business? A blunt instrument could be sharpened rather than thrown out. I think that in his Other Voices piece, Kirk Westphal pointed to what other communities have done as partial, or variations on, implementations of the active use requirement, which could have been considered (unless I missed something.)

Kudos to council members for a high level of engagement on this (and to staff for much quality work), but I’d like to see a lighter hand used in amending recommendations from planning commission.

By: TeacherPatti

TeacherPatti — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:08:28 +0000

Wow–thanks for the awesome recap, as always.

PS: I need to give shout outs to my rep, Christopher Taylor. I had a question and my man got me my answer very quickly and very friendly. And the great news is, I can have my front yard garden. As they say on the wide, wide world of web, W00T!