September 17, 2007

Minutes of Complete Neighborhood Fabric

Members present: Toby Levy, MC Canales, Jim Meko, John Elberling, Skot Kuiper and Mark Solomon

1. Announcement by Jim Meko regarding the announcement of a new planning director. Also discussion of the parking initiative and update regarding requests to change the boundaries.
2. Discussion of items regarding beginning to draft the elements of the community plan and the procedures for its review. The items were combined into one motion stating the following. The committee voted to ask staff to begin the draft of the community plan, starting with the Table of Contents and a sample of the format for the sections. Also that there be broad avenues for input, including on-line posting and submission of comments, small discussion groups, presentations at subcommittees and town hall meetings. The vote was 6-0-0, with visitors 1-0-1, in favor.
3. Discussion of program of open space included the following items.
   1. Taking over some of the less used streets and developing them into public parks spaces, like12^th Street and Russ alley. All agreed that space should be at grade.
   2. Tot Lots- There is a need for clean safe, publicly accessible tot lots to serve the many young, pre-school age kids in the district. This could be located on private property, gated and be locked at night, to assure safety and upkeep.
   3. Community Gardens with small plots that can be locked. These can be part of larger developments and publicly accessible.
   4. Dog runs at the edges to limit the impact of dogs on the other parts of open space.
   5. The parks should be in close proximity to the residential enclaves.
   6. There should also be park spaces, for day time workers that also could be safe, easily supervised.
   7. All larger development sites to have some park like open space that is accessible to both their residents and the surrounding residents and users.
4. Mix of Uses vs. Mixed use development. The goal of the mix of uses, in separate buildings would have the following benefits.
   1. Give/maintain individual identity to the district, and its users as a place with diverse users and businesses.
   2. Avoid conflicts between commercial users and residents above, so many types of businesses can remain in the area
   3. Maintain diversity of uses
   4. Many commercial and job producing businesses do not need ground floor space and often cover their windows, while ground floor space is more compatible with retail uses.
   5. Discussed two types of Major Streets in the SLR and SLI. The streets with the fast traffic, i.e. 9^th, 10^th, Harrison and Bryant, housing should be discouraged or not allowed. The other major streets, can be treated more like neighborhood commercial streets, where  mixed use buildings with the commercial for the first 20' of height would be encouraged. The heights on the major streets should be 50'. There may be some further refinements for the large lots.

5. Discussion of the reuse of Warehouse buildings. In order to encourage the retention and active reuse of existing warehouses there was discussion of allowing more types of businesses in the warehouses, then currently allowed. The specifics will be taken up by business and land use subcommittee.
   1. A proposed project was presented should saving an existing warehouse with 3 residential units above. It was agreed that given the treating of the parking in the rear, and the maintenance of the commercial space and the proposed set back, the committee found that this was a good approach.

6. Lot Aggregation:
   1. On the alleys do no permit lot aggregation in order to maintain the scale, unless it is to accommodate  PDR uses.
   2. In RED's do not permit lot aggregation, in order to maintain scale.
   3. Lot Aggregation is ok in SLI.
   4. The SLR was not discussed.

Next Meeting:

1. Review of planning issues list and summary of consensus items.

Minutes respectfully submitted by Toby Levy