April 11, 2007

New Urbanism gets lip service in recent city council vote

By Ed Martin

    The new plan seems likely to draw more favorable reaction, since the public will be informed and involved earlier in the process.

    On April 25 city council will have a 9 a.m.-4 p.m. workshop with the public invited to listen to and comment on all the presentations by those interested in developing airport properties.

    The earlier plan City Manager Marty Black described began with a committee of Black, City Attorney Bob Anderson, Airport Manager Fred Watts and Council Member John Moore reading the six proposals the city has received for building a range of projects including a massive marina, resort hotels, “championship” golf courses and an amphitheater.

    The committee was to pick one developer it felt would have the professional and fiscal ability to complete the project. The developer would then sit down with council and the community and gather input for what was desired at the airport.

    That approach drew criticism because the decision would be pretty far along before the public was informed or could participate.

    Asked to comment, Moore said that a number of the applicants seemed qualified and the proposals varied widely, ranging from 20 acres to 400, so it seemed desirable to involve the entire council and the public in developing a conceptual plan.

Talking the talk

    If you were one of the hundreds of citizens who told city planners during the Envision Venice meetings you preferred a small-town feel and scale similar to the 35-foot limit in the downtown shopping area and hoped they would apply those standards to emerging areas of the city, “say good night, Gracie.”

    “A Mixed-Use New Urbanist Community” was the title given to Michael Miller’s Renaissance development at Knights Trail and Laurel roads. April 3, the developer asked the planning commission for special exceptions to have 731 residential dwellings, a hotel and a handful of commercial sites allowed in an area previously zoned for commercial use.

    A second request was to exceed the 35-foot height limit for two 60-foot and one 62-foot buildings, and a series of 20 essentially rectangular 45-foot condos. Ten more were granted 45 feet including 10 feet for parking.

    City Planner Tom Slaughter, planning commission chair John Osmulski and his colleagues, despite having spent recent months “talking the talk” of New Urbanism, recommended unanimous approval for a project that one knowledgeable person said, “defies logic.”

    The Miller project has no real New Urbanist qualities. A letter from Betty Intagliata, chair of the Venice Area Historical Society writing as an individual, to planning commission member Janis Fawn and to Slaughter, pointed out that for such a label to be legitimate a qualified New Urbanist planner should have been involved and the community should have been involved in a charette for input into the design.

    That led Miller and attorney Jeff Boone into a hasty retreat in which they said they were not claiming that designation (despite the title of their presentation), but were “influenced” by the principles.

    What they have presented instead is a traditional residential 50-acre “sprawl” pattern of condos lined up like dominos with some intervening green spaces and a central lake. The 23-acre commercial area is off to the side and seems designed not as a real village center, but to appeal to motorists on the nearby interstate.

    It includes a hotel, restaurants and some entertainment features. As witnesses pointed out, there was no food store, no pharmacy — none of the things that a real urban center would provide, except the recreational facilities. It will add more than 2,400 autos to the traffic in the area.

    In later conversations with some planning commission members I found they were not concerned about the 60-foot buildings, even though they admitted it was a precedent for development of that area.

    One had hopes for some affordable housing. Though not spelled out in the documents, Miller said he planned to offer that renting apartments over the commercial spaces.

    Don O’Connell, an advocate for new urban planning and zoning, said a real new urbanist design would have surrounded the commercial area with residential units as opposed to a residential project with a small commercial area next to it.

    He pointed out that a long internal road paralleling Laurel Road could have had commercial space along it that would make it somewhat more likely to draw the community together.

    That same road dead-ends into a parking lot, leading Osmulski to ask why it does not connect to the next development. The city planners have been preaching their fealty to “connectability,” but the fact that the next community is slated to be a “gated” community means connectivity is unlikely.

     That connectivity failure is an example of why the criticisms made about the city’s lack of an overall plan are valid.

    What is the point of developing a comprehensive plan touting New Urbanist ideas, and then approving projects piecemeal that do not allow those goals to be reached?

    As has been recommended by every expert, hiring an urban design consultant would be a good idea.

ed@indideveniceflorida.com