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HomeMy WebLinkAboutComments from PfeiferN Gene and Linda Pfeifer 16300 Cantrell — Little Rock, Arkansas 7222$ Phone: 501-868-5222 Fax: 501-868-5252 email: pfeiferiii(pearthlink.net 14 January, 2005 Pam Adcock Little Rock Planning Commissioner Dear Pam, I ask you to vote against the pending change in the Bella Rosa Planned Office Department both for the substantive injury approval will make to the planning of Highway 10 corridor and also for the cynical manner in which the developer had approached you and the other stakeholders in the planning process. I have been a staunch supporter of the Highway 10 plan. I am involved in ownership at two of the commercial nodes and I am proud of the way I have developed that property in keeping with the plan. I am the only developer of single family residential with frontage on Highway 10: Westbury and Chevaux Court. Every owner of every other parcel on Highway 10 that has attempted to develop his or her property has tried for a more intense, more profitable use. In 1993 when the then Board decided to scuttle the Highway 10 Scenic Corridor plan by approving the zoning for a big box retailer in the transition zone, I led the fight to successfully defend the plan. At my residence (the 70 acre parcel northwest across Highway 10 from the Bella Rosa project) I have resisted every attempt by other developers to acquire my property for a more intense use than the present transition zone would allow. I shunned an inquiry from Wal -mart when they were seeking sites east of where they originally located. I continue to live on Highway 10 and maintain my property in a manner that makes it a significant contributor to any scenic character that is left after the City has allowed serial chipping away at the plan. I am content to stay there with my residential use and with transition uses as the only escape route should I decide to move. But if you allow this C-3, C-4 use at Bella Rosa diagonally across the highway from my house, you will leave me no choice but to seek commercial zoning for my property as well. And it would only be fair that it be granted. I don't see how you will be able to torn me down. This is the substantive problem You are charged with the statutory duties to make individualized decision that "protect and enhance" the approved Plan. This development if altered by this pending amendment will not "protect or enhance" the Highway 10 Plan. The Highway 10 Scenic Corridor Plan established nodes for commercial activity. The corner of Bella Rosa and Highway 10 was NOT a node. But approval of this request will de -facto create a node, change the plan and exacerbate the strip zoning of Highway 10. It is frankly a combination of C-4 and C-3 uses masquerading as a planned office development. The land use at this site is transition, which allows single family or multifamily residential or office uses of limited scale commensurate with the surrounding residential neighborhood. The City has already granted these owners a huge windfall by allowing the mini,storage use on a theory that it was being buffered by "true" office uses. Granting the present request to amend will further enhance the value of this project because retail rents are greatly in excess of the office rents that the present approval allows. If you grant this request there will not be one square inch of this project that meets the definition of the transition zone. But this proposal is not just substan#ively unacceptable, it also represents cynical use of the process. The original Bella. Rosa Mini -storage application was defeated in 1997 and that was a sound decision for the City of Little Rock. A mini -storage, a C-4 use at best had no place in the transition zone and the proposed location, half -way between two commercial nodes, would have created a new commercial node and destroyed the integrity of the Highway 10 Scenic Corridor Plan; I and several other neighbors were very vocal in opposing that application and the owners and developers of that application were very much aware of that opposition. The present approved plan, now under construction was devised to address some of the problems of the original application. It slightly scaled back the size and intensity of these uses. The mini -storage area was partially screened by a building on the north and east sides and this building was described as an office building to make the project seem more in keeping with the transition zone. The project was pushed through the approval process by emphasizing the "office" nature of the screening building and the City accepted this concept. But, and this is why I use the term "cynical" once approval was obtained and ground broken, the applicants immediately filed to revise the `office" building to permit its being used as strip commercial, destroying the one feature that had gained them the original approval. There was never anything about the design of this building to differentiate it from a strip commercial center and the plans submitted to the City labeled the project `Bella Rosa Commercial Center." Their arrogance in coming in immediately after starting construction, before even trying to rent the budding as office, is offensive. It leads to the inevitable conclusion that this parsing of decisions, leading to only incrementally more objectionable uses, was planned all along. This appalling behavior should not be rewarded. This evidence of planned and cynical subversions of the process also leads me to conclude that the persistent "notice" problem with this application has also been intentional. After all, some of the same development team that pressed the original application that was turned down because it was commercial uses are still involved in the original POD approved last Spring "without neighborhood opposition." Yet the neighborhood didn't oppose, because the neighborhood didn't know about it, because the notices sent in 1997 were not sent last Spring. They did not notify me. They did not notify ANY owners on Highway 10. One would reasonably assume that a property on Highway 10 would have owners across the road within the 200' radius for notice but they turned in list without ANY Highway 10 neighbors. They only notified one owner on Bella Rosa. One would reasonably assume that a property on Bella Rosa would have at least two owners within 200' on Bella Rosa, one being next door and one being across the street, but they turned in list with only one Bella Rosa owner. While they obviously used a seriously flawed list of neighboring owners, they did not even turn in green cards for all the neighbors they did list. The City has its own notification procedure and in this instance produced a list of addresses to which they sent a notice. While there are addresses both east and west of my address in numerical sequence, my address is missing from this list. It is very distressing to we that no one on City Staff inspected their compliance with the notice procedure. No one thought to ask, "Where is Gene Pfeifer on this issue? He lives across the street from it and he opposed it last time." Where are the other neighbors who also opposed? When the applicant represented that there was no opposition and the City Staff write-up parroted that argument, the Planning Commission and City Board swallowed it whole without a single inquisitive mind looking behind the representation. Had I been notified, I might or might not have accepted the plan but I am certain I would have bargained for the City to give the developers a strong warning not to come back requesting that this building be used for strip retail. And I am confident that the City would have seen the wisdom of giving such a warning and would have given it. At any rate, you may chose to believe that their abuse of the notice procedure was all an unfortunate accident but the extent of it causes me to charge, unflinchingly, that it was not an oversight but was intentional. If you believe as I do that it was intentional, it should not go unpunished. If it was accidental, they certainly should not be allowed to benefit from their error. I am making the case that you don't owe the applicant anything and that quite likely, you do owe the neighbors like myself some consideration as well as the consideration you owe this community and its 1-lighway 10 Scenic Corridor plan. Best personal regards, Dee 10 04 10:22a Gene and Linda Pfeifer 5018685252 10.1 EPP �1 ti Gene and Linda Pfeifer 16300 Cantrell -- Little Rock, Manses 72223 Ptone:5o1-666-5222- Fax 501-866.6252 a -mail: pfededliaearthlink.not December 10, 2004 Walter Malone Planning Manager 723 West Markham Avenue Little Rock, AR 72205 Re: Resident Comments On Proposed Highway 10 Plan Revision Dear Mr. Malone: I have thought a good deal about the City's planned revision of the Highway 10 Corridor Land Use Plant that is currently underway. As a resident, a property owner, a businessman involved in all aspect of real estate developrmmt, and as someone who has been involved it1 the Planning of Highway 10 since the beginning of the seenic corridor planning, 1 wanted my comments to rest on my own "institutional" memory, cwrent realities and thoughts about die future. As you know, the current Highway 10 Plan was designed as a result of considerable thought and substantial palic involvement when the development pressures along Highway 10 were beginning to be foit. In my view, it has fiwkly beers a suacOss and k take a measure of pride in that success as the developer of The Ranch, Chevaux Court, Westbury and other parcels conforming to and enhancing the Plan. it was put in place early and it was predicated, like any goad plart, on a few simple, easily explained and defended principles. Essentially the plant called for, and located, firnited commercial "nodes." Buffering those "modes" were "transition" zones that required oansideration of both "use" (principally office or multifamily) and "scale." The central governing principle was that for property outside those commercial nodes, existing residential uses would not be rendered obsolete and in fact new small scale single and mixed uses, including sing_ family residenjW, would thus be encouraged. I have set an example with the success of }loth Chevaux Court and Westbury although without support from the City no other new residential development in the transition zone has occurred. Still, that simple articulabie rationale is, to me, the essence of good planning and the opposite of the sort of ad hoc said micro- Dec 10 04 10:22a Gene and Linda Pfeifer 5018685252 p.2 Walter Malone December 10, 2004 Page 2 managed process in which development almost always gets bogged down when a land use plan is not simple, is not coherent, and is not easy to explain and apply. Frankly, I see no similar overarching principles governing the proposed map that was sent out for comment. I think history has shown that without that simplicity we will have only a series of ad hoe micro decisions that are made politically through unconnected compromises. Such process unfortunately has made Chenal Boulevard/kanis no better than Rodney Parham and Rodney Parham no better than University. If the City has determined (which I do not believe) that the development pressures are so great that a simple articulable line can no longer be held on Highway 10,1 am not sure that in the medium -run my wife and I can continue to maintain our current residence and iberdbnre I also have comments on the micro level of the proposed map. As you know, my residence is located as part of a tract of 70 acres I own in an area currently zoned "transition." That planning designation, as identified in the old Plan, gave me (and I suppose my "heirs") comfort on two fronts: so long as the Plan remained in effect I can enjoy my "country living." If the plan changes to the extent that my wife and I have to move, we have an "out" of permissible office or multi -family use within a "transition" zoning. Under the proposed Plan however my property becomes "single family," and about the only "stretch" of single family on the entire corridor. Those changes remove both "protections" on which I was relying. Moreover, the planned Plan that should have "controlled" a development in the vicinity of my residence doesn't even have the "virtue" of confortning to what is actually built, namely the Bella Rosa POD currently being constructed. This is particularly true when a pending revision of the POD is factored in. That POD on 7.5 Acres almost directly across Highway 10 from my house was originally approved last year (without required notice to me and several other adjacent owners) as "office" buffering a `mini -warehouse." There is, as you know, under consideration for pending approval a revision of that POD turning the office "buffer" into a predominately C-3 commercial/showroom use. PODZ-62198B. This revision inexplicably has staff approval. Yet the proposed "Plan" continues to show that property as "transition" and no plan chan&,e is.apparenlly nowso tdered necess . Simply put, under the proposal, the planning designation would, as I read it, be "suburban office" even though the revised Bella Rosa POD, if approved, will be almost exclusively a combination of C-3 and used C-4 uses. That is inexplicable to ine as a matter of policy, and frankly will further make the proposed change from transition to single family on my property both poor planning and unacceptable. If the property across Highway 10 is completely just C-3 and G4, (none of which was to be approved in the transition zone, my ownership on which I have my residence and pasture will not be a suitable site for a single family development when i need to move and need to do something with the `excess" undeveloped real estate. Dec 10 04 10:23a Gene and Linda Pfeifer 5018685252 p,3 Walter Malone December 10, 2004 Page 3 cc: In summary, what 1 would like to see is: 1. A change in the staff recommendation on the Bella Rosa revision to "denial'. 2, My property remain as "transition." Thomas M. Carpenter, Esq Christopher O. Parker, Esq.