DDNA Focus Group Meeting on December 17, 2008
Time: 6:30-7:00 pm
Room 303, City Hall
Meeting Summary
The DDNA focus groups met to provide a brief overview of our goals, teams, and strategic approach. The main objective of the focus group is to review the 2030 Draft Comprehensive Plan by dividing up into five focus groups (Arts and Culture, Environmental Protection, Parks and Greenways, Transportation Systems, and Urban Form and Land Use) and provide written feedback and recommendations to the Planning Staff by the January 31, 2009 deadline. We did introductions for everyone, had some additional discussion about the team lead meeting that occurred on Monday and gave everyone some dates to save (January 8 from 6-7:30pm and January 14 from 6:30-8:30pm) where we will leverage other events for meeting time and space.
The team leads will be communicating to all stakeholders on their team by December 22, giving out reading assignment over the holidays and setting each of their teams schedules for January 2009. The teams then had a few minutes to divide up and have some discussion with their teams. We then transitioned to the Raleigh Citizen Advisory Council (RCAC) meeting. About half of the attendee’s were able to stay for that. (Additional notes below.)
Focus Group Attendee’s
- Mark Vander Borgh (Team Lead, Environmental Protection)
- Bob Mosher (Team Lead, Urban Form)
- Jason Hibbets (Team Lead, Transportation)
- John G Reaves, Jr (Arts and Culture)
- Milt Rhodes, AICP (Urban Form, Arts and Culture)
- Ruth Little (Urban Form)
- Emily Biggs (Urban Form)
- Craig Ralph, CSM (Transportation)
- Marsha Presnell-Jennette (Parks and Greenways)
- Mary Belle Pate (Urban Form)
RCAC Meeting Notes
The Raleigh Citizen Advisory Council (RCAC) conducted a few business items before Mitch Silver and Ken Bowers provided a presentation, which I’m calling 2030 Comprehensive Plan 101. The presentation basically gave everyone an introduction to the design, composition, and structure of the Comp Plan. The presentation was a great orientation to the plan and walked us through how to read it and make comments. The plan itself is representative of comments from all sources including comments form previous public meetings and additional inputs.
Some of the key take-a-ways were:
- re-oriented small area plans, reduced from 2/3 to 1/4 small area plans. Details of the small plans were incorporated into city wide elements
- economy of languages; policy language is typically 1-2 sentences
- purpose of the comp plan is:
- blueprint for growth
- policy document
- greater prediction for citizens, developers, and officials
- house polices and action for all city departments in one document
- one additional purpose is to avoid conflict with zoning law
- Six main goals
- economic prosperity and equity
- expanded housing choices
- manage growth
- coordinate land & transportation use
- greenpirnt Raleigh
- growing successful neighborhoods and communities
- There are four major sections to the comp plan
- Introduction / Framework
- 13 specific elements
- 21 area plans (was 67)
- Implementation
- Four center types identified: Downtown, City growth, Community mixed-use, and transit oriented. Four corridor types: Highway, Multi Modal, Urban, and Parkway. Per future land use, this carries weight as a plan policy but is NOT a zoning map. It’s a guide to future zoning.
- For economic development plans, the district plans were removed and converted into city-wide plans. 67 area plans (which were old, complete, or no action taken) were reduced to 21 area plans.
- Guidelines for streets, sidewalks, and driveway access are part of the plan. Urban Design Guidelines (UDG) are now expanded to neighborhood mixed-use and village centers.
- Land Use and Transportation sections effect all other section. A focus on policies should be paid attention to when reviewing.
I had a few questions that I asked; I’ll try to paraphrase as best as I can:
- Q: Once the plan is adapted, can changes be made and if so how are they made? A: Planning anticipates to make yearly updates to the plan, progress reports so-to-speak. Moving forward, the plan will be updated every five years.
- Q: Were any small area plans converted to economic development zones? A: No. But there are sections of small area plans that overlap with economic development zones.
- Q: What percentage of Umpstead Park is the overall Parks/Greenspace area? Note, the presentation notes about 15% green / park /open space. A: Umpstead Park is about 4% of that value. They also talked about “green fingers” that map to creeks / water sources instead of a green belt approach used in other cities.
- Q: Are there transportation multi-modal concepts for Highway 64 and I-40 (Wilmington corridor)? A: There is a multi-modal area planned for New Bern Ave. near Eastern Wake Med to capture commuters from that section. I do not recall if there was an answer for I-40. (I need to make a comment about Walnut Creek being a destination area for concerts.)
- Q: To put you on the spot, what will Raleigh look like in 203o if compared to a current city in the United States, considering footprint and population size? A: The leading cities that we should look to as models are (in no specific order) Portland, Denver, Dallas (on the up-tick), Baltimore, and Charlotte.
There were numerous other questions and conversations at the meeting. When / if I see the meeting notes posted for the RCAC, I will add a link. Otherwise, if one of you stumbles upon this information, please post in the comments.