The M:OME
Bridge Street Neighborhood Project Update
by HopeDance Staff
If you haven’t been aware, the SLO City Council voted down the eco design / affordable housing project (named The Bridge Street Neighborhood Project) unanimously. There have been numerous responses. We select these three responses:
Groundswell builds for Bridge Street Project
from the Chamber of Commerce E - insider missive....
The City Council’s shortsighted rejection of the Bridge Street Project has caused a backlash. The Council members, who’ve said previously they wanted in-fill housing, compact urban form, affordable workforce housing and green, environmentally sensitive development, were willing to reject this project even though it provided all of these benefits. Why? Because a small group of misinformed but influential neighbors are convinced that housing for "those people" will degrade their neighborhood. Of course, the council couldn’t use that argument publicly against the project, so they created bogus ones like flood issues and open space. (The project will be built one foot above the 100 year flood level, the same standard that has been applied to every other project in the city for the last 30 years. And the open space is a sliver of land that’s privately owned.) Thanks to excellent coverage of this issue in The Tribune, many local citizens are calling council members. It’s working, but more pressure is needed. Let them know how you feel.
(Go to http://www.slo-business.com/legislative.html for the email addresses of the city council members.)
A city council member who voted against the project responds publicly:
I figured when I was elected to office that, sooner or later, I would piss everyone off. The recent City Council vote regarding the Bridge Street project seems to have added what some consider to be my primary constituency to the list.
The housing design proposed is the greenest, most sustainable and environmentally friendly offering that we ever have seen here in town. It is exactly what I have been advocating and championing for years. So, why did I vote against it?
Simply stated, it is the right thing in the wrong place. The location is in a heavy industrial manufacturing zone, in a flood plan, leapfrogging over undeveloped land to push into the edge of open space at the edge of the hills. This is not an area the City has planned for residential development.
City staff found various policies that seem to support the project. But I believe that many policies in our Safety Element, Noise Element, Landuse and Open Space Elements of our General Plan that do not support the project were ignored in their analysis.
What came across loud and clear though, from staff, the Planning Commission, indeed, from the hue and cry of the community at large, is that sustainable, environmentally friendly design is what we want to see. So this should become our standard; this is where we should set the bar.
If we truly want to see the innovative design concepts of the Bridge Street project utilized in town, we are going to have to demand it. We must institutionalize these standards in the policies of the City.
We are updating our Housing Element, and will soon be doing the same with our Conservation and Energy Elements. I invite the visionaries of the Bridge Street project to become involved at the policy level to help us achieve in the future the innovative ideas that have excited the community.
The City plans to annex land and rezone other areas for residential use. Can we expect better projects than we have seen in the past? We have housing projects ready to come forward that give us the same old thing we have always gotten. And that is what we are going to keep on getting if we do not demand better.
Another unusual and exciting component of the project was the large percentage of the homes to be sold in a moderately affordable price range. This was only possible because there is a magnanimous property owner willing to sell land at a reasonable price. While his land is not in any of the areas that the City plans for housing, he has certainly shown leadership to other property owners that one can do the right thing, and make some money, without being greedy and insisting on maximizing one’s profit.
The Bridge Street project took a lot out of me; it is probably the most difficult vote I have made in my three years on the Council. But I believe the Council did the right thing. After days of study and several hours in a public hearing, we concluded that this was a wonderful concept, but in the wrong place.
Let’s concentrate now on bringing sustainable and environmentally friendly designs to all new housing in town. And let's remember that the price of land locally is the largest component of housing price .
--Christine Mullholland
A reponse to Christine’s letter:
Christine’s letter brought to mind a conver-sation I once had with Michael Corbett, the visionary architect and planner of Village Homes in Davis, California. Constructed in the late 70’s and early 80’s, Village Homes is one of the most amazing ecologically designed communities that is still thriving in the U.S. As is the case with most non-tra-ditional projects, Corbett’s concept initially faced a lot of opposition. Upon submitting his proposal to the Planning Department in Davis, he was quickly turned down and told that he would never get the variances to construct such a development. He was given a long list of "no’s."
Shortly after, Michael attended a party wherein, as fate would have it, he met a City Council member who was enthralled with the project and offered to support the en-deavor. So, Michael embarked on a quest to convince to Planning Department that the project would actually be a boon to the city rather than a financial burden. He illustrated that good design would take pressure off the city having to construct and maintain ad-ditional sewage runoff and that it would use less electricity because of its reliance on solar energy and landscaping conservation etc. Needless to say, the project was erected and, to this day, it is a beautiful haven for families who still live there 20 years later and the kids of other communities surrounding them.
Ironically, Michael Corbett became Mayor of Davis in order to change the policies that had made it so hard for good environmental projects like Village Homes to get approval. Slowly, he started to change the rules and actually was making some progress until local developers, who felt he was stepping on their toes, decided to oust Corbett. During the next election, the developers poured tons of money into back-ing Corbett’s opposition and consequently removed Michael and all those who had sup-ported his ideas. Then, the new City Council went on to approve so many poorly designed sub-divisions that it created a backlash in the community. A "no growth" policy was adopted and presently the City of Davis won’t allow any development no matter how beneficial. As it stands, Davis is surrounded by sprawling sub-divisons, with Village Homes remaining the only large alternative. This is a prime example of one community’s attempt to change the process. Can we hope for better? I hope so.
I can’t decipher from Christine’s let-ter if she offered to help promote San Luis Obispo’s Bridge Street Project by trying to influence to City Council before they reached the voting process. If she didn’t of-fer suggestions to the council, she certainly missed an opportunity to change the legal process before such issues come to vote. All of her suggestions appear to have come after the vote. In the long run, developers will only alter the design of their projects if the Planning Commission and City Council influence them in the right direction. For the most part, this will be a decision that is forced upon developers, not willingly adopted. This is what a community needs to do through it’s local government to lead the process to create sustainable living environ-ment.
A project such as Bridge Street will be sorely missed, as they seldom come as beauti-fully conceived. It truly is a shame that de-velopers still use money as a weapon against ecological projects that care for both people and the earth, to get the local government to give them variances well offer the com-munity crumbs of change. The Bridge Street project would have justified the variances by allowing human compassion to flourish. Yes, you might have had a lot of reasons for rejecting the project, but there were just as many reasons and more to adopt it. Unfortu-nately, change is not easy.
Wes Roe, is the SBarbara editor of HopeDance and co-head of the Permaculture Guild of the South Coast.
Final note:
As of this date, the Bridge Street Project has been invited by numerous cities in SLO County (Paso Robles and Arroyo Grande, to name a couple) to take their ecodesign and affordable housing plans to their respective cities. Cheers!
