North Main Street Today - and Tomorrow?

To minimize NeNo's impact, the developers' renderings make the existing houses appear as barren as their own site plan. Here is the rendering from their latest submission to Planning:

Here's how the neighboring houses really look, from the sidewalk across the street:

At Planning Commission, Jean Carlberg repeatedly criticized the neighbors for saying the site plan would destroy the scale and character of our residential neighborhood. But that is exactly what it would do.

This block is now a neighborhood of one- and two-family homes. The city's Central Area Plan calls for it to continue in that use. NeNo, in the developers's own words, would be a "gateway to downtown."

If Downtown doesn't end at Kingsley Street, where does it end?

Near North vs Liberty Lofts

"the large industrial-looking structures provide a nice contrast to the surrounding traditional two-story homes."

The quote is from the developers' website, where an unnamed West Side resident compares Near North to Liberty Lofts, the condos in the former GT Products factory downtown.

As Margaret Schankler pointed out at Planning Commission last week, it's quite a stretch to compare the two projects:

• There have been factories on the Liberty Lofts site for a century.
• There have been one- and two-family homes on the NeNo site for a century.
• Liberty Lofts occupies an entire city block.
• NeNo would demolish 8 houses in what is now an entirely residential block.
• Liberty Lofts' addition is more than 100 feet from the nearest neighbors.
• NeNo would be 12-24 feet from the nearest neighbors.
• Liberty Lofts is in the Downtown zone.
• NeNo would be in the North Central Neighborhood, two blocks from Downtown.

Liberty Lofts creatively reused an existing Downtown building. NeNo would insert a Downtown building into a residential neighborhood.

Planning Commission Recommends Denial

Planning Commission reopened its public hearing last night to allow citizens to comment on the developers' latest plan for NeNo. (Above, Damien Farrell and Bill Godfrey answer questions). Thanks to all 17 (!) speakers who opposed to the project.

The revised plan would demolish the 3 northernmost houses, as requested by Planning Commission at its May meeting. It also expanded the rear setbacks, as requested in our May letter to Planning Commission.

Unfortunately, as our speakers pointed out, the developers just moved that space to the front of the main building. It's now more supersized than ever, towering 55 feet above Main Street. The plan still calls for a new retail space that's contrary to all planning for this block, and detracts from the PUD's intended purpose--it would put a liquor store inside a building housing a vulnerable population!

And of course the core problem remains: the project would rip open the fabric of an intact residential block. In the words of Commisioner Eppie Potts, it will create a "new edge" from which future developments will encroach on our now-fragmented neighborhood.

Planning staff recommended DENYING the PUD zoning and site plan. Their report concluded that NeNo would have limited benefits, would have a detrimental effect on surrounding properties, and that it needlessly violates the Central Area Plan. Click here to read their full report.

The bad news: only two commissioners heeded the staff recommendation. Both Potts and Kirk Westphal clearly articulated how far NeNo deviates from what the site's zoning and planning would permit, and the enormous damage it would do to the "scale and character" of the neighborhood.

As noted in an earlier posting, the "workforce" units will actually be much more expensive than existing housing in the neighborhood. At the hearing, we cited evidence from a rentlinx.com search that found more than 800 units within a mile of the site that meet the developers' definition of "affordable"--renting for less than $774 per resident per month.

Unfortunately, the other five commissioners present either missed or doubted the information provided by their staff and the neighbors. Their comments showed they'd accepted the false choice offered by the developers, and believed that failing to approve this project would hurt the homeless and the working poor.

On the contrary, we believe that both populations would be poorly served by this expensive boondoggle, and that the government money spent on it could benefit many more people at a less expensive, less hilly site. We'll expand on this in a future post.

The good news: with pro-NeNo Commissioner Tony Derezinski absent, the project's proponents still fell one vote short of the majority needed to recommend the project. It will go to City Council with a recommendation for Denial.