Davis Islands Neighborhood Planning Task ForceWorking Meeting Minutes Present: Lee Medart, Jeffrey Siewert, Andy Hayes, Shirley Mora, Denise Cava-naugh, Shelia Spicola, Charner Reese, and Planning Commission representative: Terry Cullen, Rose Petrucha. Absent: Renae Tvedt, (Excused) Lisa DeVitto, Lorraine Smith, Gary Brown, Phyllis Pacyna-Fleming, Pam Tayon, Renee Meehan, (unexcused) (Note: an excused absence is one that the Chair has been notified before the meeting that the member cannot make it.) Meeting was called to order at 6:40 pm. Quorum noted. No Minutes submitted for approval. ReportsThe Chair noted that she had sent out to the Task Force her idea of the Residential Section of the Plan – she commented that people thought it was too detailed and that she expected the Residential part of the PLAN would be very detailed. There is no way to explain to people about the current zoning is without explanation and education. She suggested that the Task Force needed to understand what the PLAN is going to express. Is it just going to have options in the PLAN of how we obtain the VISION or is the reason for the “preview” i.e., surveys in the newspaper; upcoming OPEN house to present the options to the community and have them chose one of the options that will then be placed in the PLAN. The Chair asked that Terry clarify what will be the content of the final PLAN that we will give to the stakeholders to vote on. ProcessTerry indicated that the Chair, Rose and he met this afternoon and that we shared detail that the Task Force had gathered together. He recapped the process and where the Task Force was in the process. We started with finding out what the issues were from the community. This fell into certain categories. Then we worked on finding detail in these categories through Study Circles. From these discussions, we saw things emerge called VALUES – not so much what is physically there but what is the emotional comment about what the people on the Islands believe that is very important to them. We then brought those VALUES back to the community and they validated those Values. Once we understood the values, then construction begins because you use the VALUES as a test to see if it would work on the Islands. From the VALUES we then constructed the VISION, which is a long-term conceptual look as to what the future holds. The VISION is comprised of two pieces, it is a series of state-ments based on topical ideas, everything from community identity – the second part of the VISION is the CONCEPT map. The whole idea of the VISION is just that – it’s not the PLAN; it is not meant to be specific; it is supposed to be generalized and conceptual. We took the VISION back to the community and asked them to endorse the VISION to see if we had captured the community’s sense of place. The whole process is a bunch of stepping stones because of the whole consensus building. The whole community will eventually vote on this PLAN so we are going through this step-by-step to make sure we capture things that are important to them. Each step, ISSUES, VALUES, VISION is validated by the community. Now that we have gotten those things we are ready to propose things that are much more definitive nature, which will be the PLAN. To develop the PLAN, the four components; residential, commercial, transportation and parks and recreation are use the VISION to draw out a couple of different options as to how you would see the Islands based on the VISION how it would look like – some definitive proposals. Such as Commercial – urban design; gathering place for the community; Islanders patronize it and the shop owners support community activity. The reason for coming up with options, is the process is when you do something, you take it back to the community and they validate what they like or not. We take the several options back to the community ask them to talk about parts they like or not and get them to start talking about it. After we are finished, we come back to the table and identify which are the preferred options which are then woven together making sure it is internally consistent then that becomes the PLAN. How far do we take those options? Terry suggested that we needed to be careful bringing the options to implementation for it might cause controversy on the Islands that we’d have no way out. At this point, we need to go through each of the sections and understand the options – plural – of each of the sections. We need to focus on the sections that have not been discussed as much as others. The PLAN will, at a minimum is going to contain the options that the community selects and will describe what the indications of those options are (because the community needs to be able to make an informed choice of the options being presented to them.) and we need to decide in a separate dialogue if we want to go further than that. Charner suggested that at the “preview” meeting we only take the options and get feedback on those – then we take back those options we got support for and work on the implementation portion of those options; Supported options becomes the “method”; and the strategy how to get there is the implementation. Transportation, Jeffery Siewert – discussion was on what would be options – Jeffery stated that he had several studies that he was compiling the results – volume, speed, etc. – he suggests that he just present the findings and give suggestions areas identified and the techniques of how to achieve your goals. He stated that all the solutions/options to correct the areas is a long-term project unless someone wants to pay for it. The Chair suggested that we, the Task Force shouldn’t be labeling options as long-term, mid-term, short-term it should be up to the community to decide priorities – which is top priority, etc. Terry suggested that we look at the examples of what options could be: The VISION says that getting around Davis Islands is safe because of attractive and innovative traffic-calming designs – what options will be the different traffic-calming techniques and where they would be located. Many choices for traveling skating, bicycling, boating, running, air travel – we need to talk a bit about it and where there could be improvements – some of these would cross-over into walkways Charner is doing or some might mean additional sidewalks – of create something that would connect all of your amenities – hospital, yacht club, marina and so forth. Then talk about options for the bus; that’s the way to take it apart and talk about it piece by piece and talk about the options then get responses from the community and build it all back up into the PLAN. Jeffery stated that he had planned to just give a bunch of pictures – because if he gave them anything to read it would be thick. Terry suggested more depth – the VISION talks about walking and bicycling are protected and enhanced. Bike paths are to be shown; connectivity to areas on the Islands; Parking – a commodity that is carefully managed shortages, truck loading zones, and physical appearances of parking lots which crosses over into commercial on that. Overall, it’s getting around Davis Islands’ is safe, not a problem. Parents feel comfortable letting their children travel around the Islands freely – pulling it apart you can see how you can have different options for various things – then when the community starts telling you that you like this and that, you can start pulling it together in a more integrated fashion. Underground-Utilities and pedestrian-scaled streetlights also need to be included. Residential, Andy Hayes – residential is a large section of the PLAN – the reason for this is that residential covers Single Family-detached, Single-family attached, and multi-family – if you want to maintain status-quo of the current percentages you explore that – now how do you do that? Is it a zoning change? Does that mean we enact an overlay district? Another is eliminating physical blight in residential areas caused by parking. An option is to require all the lots that have alleyways bring the vehicles into the site via the alley. So now that you have the streets which have very little lot zoned, turn the streets into spaces for front porches and you put the vehicles into the alleys. Another option would be eliminate some on-street parking – that fixes some of the problems on the streets but it doesn’t solve the problem of where people are putting their cars when they come home at night. Andy stated that he felt that residential could be as succinct as these other areas in stating options, and comparing them to the VISION and you take the next step and look at implementation or options on how to fix it becomes a lot more detailed and complex. “A lot of residential areas inter mixed with commercial areas in a mixed-use type of development” – There are some people that flat-out don’t want anymore multi-family. But it could be done – another piece which could get very detailed is on the commercial side – it has a whole set of options – maintain commercial size; limit it properties; allow it to grow to the water; to allow limited growth into fringe areas that are multifamily/offices/mixed-use. All of those options could be stated rather succinctly to get the idea across but when you look at what the next step is then those things become complex and detailed out of necessity. Terry suggested that the range of options should be confined around what the VISION says. Davis Islands is predominately single-family detached housing, it talks about the townhouses and multifamily being part of the mix but limit it. The first question is get the islanders tell you what mix make sense. The present mix? “The existing amount, proportion and type of land uses on Davis Islands is appropriate.” What percentage – 72%. Use this as a basis for defining the range of options: - it goes on to talk about the multifamily and town houses limited and are attractively designed and planned – so we need to present options as to what that means to be attractively designed and planned. Then further on under implementation we can talk about overlay districts; building guidelines, height and so on to encourage interaction. So how do you make that happen through as an example, they have to require some kind of open space in their development – “People can live their entire life on Davis Islands, the housing stock reflects different cycles of life.” – Demonstrate that and what are the options be related to that – would that take you from a single-family home to an ACLF? The basis for forming your range of your options – connect to it – Andy brought up an excellent idea to honor the VISION statement to keeping the mix of land uses by remix them differently to try to achieve the things we want out of the residential. That might work with one of the Commercial options – we don’t know yet – take out some of the businesses and put into the mix some multifamily – you’re not expanding the area but rather just changing the area. And this puts safety in that you can’t put any of that into a single-family detached neighborhood. There are two schools of thought on how to approach residential and we have to come to a resolution, which also plays into the how much detail and implementation. Define the range of options: show a land use diagram that is 3-d in nature and shows some of the townhouses spread all over as opposed to being stacked onto commercial. “Suburban style residential development is important” – The suburban style – green front yards, attractively landscaped, - define what that suburban value is – 20 ft front setback – “multifamily housing is part of the housing mix but are limited and attractively designed and planned to blend in with the Islands and to encourage social interaction.” – Option: any future town house redevelopment requires garages to enter and exit off an alleyway. Then you have people designed streets instead a tiny hole where the door is – how do you control it? Especially where there are no alleyways. Plan for it. Andy suggested that he did not feel that we would need an overlay district for residential. He offered to bring some examples of success without an overlay district. Terry suggested that we brainstorm residential. At the next meeting, it was suggested that we do a “group-think” on residential option – we could come up with different options. Andy suggested that he’d do some diagrams on the possible options. Charner suggested that we have zoning, comprehensive and VISION maps around us in the discussion. Pictures of what is with sketches of could be. Use heritage aspects to sketch how the collector streets could be streetscape. Andy said he’d lay out some diagrams for the residential options for the next meeting on the 6th of December. Commercial for example – How can I say that extending the Village Center to the water is promoted by the VISION? - You can make that connection but the important point being is the connection – be responsible to the people we’re serving – they are looking for how you interpreted their VISION and how you did it is through your options. If you start going off on different tangents and not relating it to understanding levels to the VISION we could then start running into trouble. Getting around is intertwined with community appearance. Streetscape lighting examples. Terry suggests that we put into the newspaper surveys that we put as a watermark “for discussion purposes only” Schedule of Next Meetings: December 6th, Jan 4th, Jan 25th, Jan 31st – Tennis Courts. Meeting was adjourned at 8:20pm. |
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