National Community Planning Month | Civic Involvement -- Sometimes you lose

Sometimes you lose.  It's hard today for me in terms of promoting civic involvement, since "I" lost badly on a zoning issue yesterday relating to Sugar House Park ("Plan to build to a 7-story hotel next to Sugar House Park receives key endorsement," KSL-TV).  

I am not prone to hyperbole, but the decisions in the case before ours and ours basically came out in favor of spot zoning tall buildings "for housing" regardless of land use context.  It's really a kind of Houstonization that I don't think people fully grasp ("‘No zoning’ in Houston provides flexibility, complications, experts say. Why does it matter?," Houston Landing).

I'm fine with taller buildings, but not extranormally tall buildings next to one and two story residences, small apartment buildings, and civic buildings.  The city has specific zones where that kind of density is appropriate, and the tallest buildings should be directed to those areas. 

In effect, the proposed hotel is seemingly within Sugar House Park, although technically it is a private parcel--but the only one on the site, an historic anomaly created in 1942 when the site was still a prison.  

No major urban park in the US, like Central Park, Prospect Park, Union Squares in NYC and SF, Millennium Park and Grant Park in Chicago, the urban square parks in DC like Franklin Park or Farragut Square, new city parks like Discovery Green in Houston, has a building like this "on" its property.  Such buildings are across the street.

Central Park, NYC.  

I once went on a tour of some Manhattan parks, led by a former NYC parks commissioner.  Someone asked him about raising private funds to support the parks.  He said it's a definite benefit having billionaires living across the street.

Said the Vice Chair of the Planning Commission:

"I think to build better communities, it's actually more beneficial to have two sides of the street and the four corners of the street zoned similarly," Commissioner Brian Scott said before the vote.

My first thought when the words came out of his month is that he sure as hell never heard of Kevin Lynch and his book Image of the City, and the point about "edges" and "districts."  

I'm thinking of sending him a copy of the book.

I was so angry after the meeting.  

Only one commissioner supported our position, for what we thought were obvious reasons.  It seemed like reasonable points about context were completely ignored.  It made me wonder why I even bother.

The other commissioners in their comments equivocated, and certainly didn't seem too concerned about the impact on the park, believing that there is no other alternative to improve it.  

Granted the site now is an eyesore, but we have an alternative, it's just that the underlying property owner refused to consider it.  She overvalued the property, believing she could get an upzone and it turned out she was right.

This site actually is full of opportunity.  Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.

The final decision will be made by City Council.  Stay tuned.