As discussed at the Oct. 3 General Membership meeting, the Comments from the Planning Department have been obtained. Scanned comments to be posted when available. After reviewing the City’s comments, clearly the effort of Jefferson Park stakeholders to inform the Applicant on how to sensibly incorporate dense new development within the context of the neighborhood present and future are reasonable enough to be sought by the City for inclusion into the new PUD zone district. Although much of what the neighborhood seeks is clearly spelled out in the neighborhood plan, nonetheless Jefferson Park stakeholders should be thankful of the steps the Community Planning and Development Department is taking to safeguard the physical relationship the proposed project will have to the neighborhood. The points posted on this web site, as well as presented at the last General Membership meeting have been requested by the City to be addressed by the PUD.
Those of you following along know this is a big step. All along the neighborhood has maintained that the RMU-30 zone district would permit the 3-building, massive 357-unit development, as proposed, enabling the blocking of views, allowing numerous curb cuts and wouldn’t necessitate quality integration with the neighborhood. Naturally, that proposal could not be supported by the neighborhood, yet appeared to have the support of the Planning Department policymakers. Repeated attempts by members of JPUN to work with the developer to address neighborhood concerns only revealed the inability of the developer to meaningfully compromise. JPUN made moderate strides in May, when the City finally agreed to a PUD rezoning, but the PUD was to be written around the proposal that Jefferson Park still objected to, and putting major limitations on what otherwise could readily be incorporated into a PUD.
When negotiations of the major physical issues were stonewalled by the developer in the run up to the August 8th meeting, it was evident, that however valid, the developer was not willfully going to conceed to items that should have been understood from the outset. When JPUN presented thier primary grievences on August 10th in front of all interested parties, it was confirmed that nearly all could be and should be addressed in this PUD.
It has been a long long road to get here, and this processes is far from over. But the comments on the PUD application are requiring the Developer to finally address the physical concerns of the neighborhood.
If you’d like to join the JPUN Watch Dog Group, in charge of monitoring this process and taking necessary actions, email jpun@jpun.org.
