Thursday, August 30, 2007

The 2001 Comp Plan and T-Zones

Whoever wrote this last post, doesn't know what he/she is talking about. Way to go!
While Jeff Pfeil may have not been directly responsible for the creation of the T-zones which led to the condo-complexes near Franklin Square, the 2001 Comp Plan recommended the creation of special development districts in the urban core. For anyone who wants to look at small diagrams of them, they're in the old Comp Plan. These areas -- namely Franklin Square, the gut, from Henry and Lake and continuing down High Rock, and the other side of Lake where the Parting Glass and adjacent property(which used to be a gas station)were re-zoned to be T-zones.
Now T-zones translate into much higher density, which "real"city planners originally intended to go hand-in-hand with mass transit. This is a green way of going about it, and not over-relying on parking garages to solve all our city's traffic woes.
As for T-zones and the New Urbanism -- the timing here is interesting as we witness the Ayco's and other mortgage lending outfits descend upon our city. All systems go for developing the hell out of Saratochka. And when I use the word "development" the meaning is closer to destruction. Because most of what's going up in Saratochka is not sustainable.

1 comment:

Ben Arnold said...

Only because you seem to place an emphasis on "truth":

The 2001 Comp Plan did not "create" any special development areas, the 01 Plan simply re-named "impact areas" that were created with the adoption of the 1999 Comp Plan. Quite to the contrary, the Pfeil committee actually ELIMINATED certain Special Development areas. The Chairman of the 1999 committee was Bill Dake....just in case you want to place blame for the City's current economic success. Notably, even prior to 1999, projects like Congress Park Centre were still considered attractive in the downtown core.....regardless of whether or not a capitalist entity occupied the space.

I guess it silly to assume your committee would have even a cursory understanding of the document you've been working on for the last 8 MONTHS!