Planning Commission Minutes 2015 01 08

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes January 8, 2015 Page 21 of 23 their concerns. So the City seems to promote getting more citizen involvement which is helpful for both the City and the citizens, he hopes that the PC and the City Council will pay closer attention to what they are hearing from their Louisville neighbors. Most of us want to see healthy development and improvements in Louisville, but not at the expense of losing our small town character. We can have the conversation of what small town character is and it may be an abstract issue, if you see it, you'll know it. After you have had a chance to review all the information and citizen input regarding the redevelopment or development ideas for South Boulder Road, he hopes the PC will make the recommendations to City Council that are in the best interest of the City and its residents. He was looking at the community weekly in the Daily Camera a few weeks ago, and an advertisement caught his eye from a newer business, Elevations Credit Union, on McCaslin. The advertisement said "Here's to a return to what matters, to knowing your true social network is physically located in the community that you call home. Here's to Main Street, not Wall Street." Closed Public Hearing and discussion by Commission: Pritchard asks that based on the SWOT analysis, is PC comfortable with the changes red -lined in the document? Are we in support? Russell asks if the purpose of SWOT analysis to be a transcript or summary of the feedback you received at the kick-off meeting or is it a combination of kick-off and stakeholders. Russ answers that this is more than the public meeting. We have Envision Louisville.com, we have numerous interactions with the community both in terms of stakeholders, BRAD committee, City Council doing proactive research, and Staff has a number of ways to get information to and from the public. This is trying to summarize it and give some guidance to the community as we get physical. The next stage is to take this and actually put strategies on the ground. From a SWOT perspective, it is intended to raise awareness to what we find as a community as challenging; the entire community, not a niche of the community. The Principles are meant to "this is what we hope to achieve". When we come up with alternatives, we want to measure them. Alternatives will be guided by the Principles; the SWOT is to simply raise awareness to the challenges and opportunities that are before us. Russell says the answer is helpful. When he thinks about the aesthetic appearance of the corridor, he would be open to taking that out. He thinks about driving over the hill down South Boulder Road on a summer day, it is nice. When you get farther east, it gets sketchy, but is that the most important weakness to talk about. He is find keeping it in and fine taking it out. The lack of community consensus on desires says there is a lack of consensus on the primary purpose of the corridor. Maybe it less an issue of community consensus and more an issue of what is the purpose of the corridor. This is an issue that all communities are dealing with, what do you do with a big road like that? On Principle 3, we could say that established design regulations to insure development "closely reflects" because he doesn't think you can "strongly reflect" the community's vision. Tengler says he is in favor of keeping the notion of the "appearance of the corridor" as we are talking about a relatively small segment from the other side of the ball fields to Via Appia, not considering the vista going down the hill on South Boulder Road. We are talking about a much smaller section and candidly, he thinks there are some areas within that stretch that could use some work from a visual standpoint. He is in favor of keeping "closely reflects". He is comfortable with the rest of the SWOT analysis and the rest of the Principles that Staff has modified from the last PC meeting. Rice says that the Threats sections could perhaps be better stated as Challenges but then it would not be SWOT. From his perspective, not announcing that there is a lack of consensus ultimately but that this is a challenge we need to work through to see if we can drive consensus.