Maggie says:
Last night's County Commission meeting was an important moment for community planning and represented a big victory for rural character and neighborhood rights. By a 5-0 unanimous vote, the Commission denied John Black's proposal to build a large corporate commercial development (Home Depot, Applebees, etc.) on a parcel of agricultural land in the South Valley at Rio Bravo and Coors.
This site is already infamous, as local planning types know, from the fight over the construction of a Super Wal-Mart at the same intersection. The differences are this: whereas the new Wal-Mart, which opened its doors just months ago, sits on an island of city-owned land, the Black site is on County land. This decision really becomes a fascinating point of contrast between City and County governments. What it points out is what the anti-unification/grassroots planners have been saying all along: the County handles development and growth issues much, much better than the City does. And to the pro-unification/liberal planner types who kept telling us to prove it despite the loads of anecdotal evidence already supporting our position, I say: the County Commission did that quite nicely last night, thank you.
The biggest differences between the Wal-Mart and Black cases involve time and process. Residents had barely any time at all to organize against the Wal-Mart two years ago; the process (in classic Wal-Mart fashion) was secretive, rushed, and seemingly approved before the process even began. One of the main reasons information was so hard to come by is that because the Wal-Mart site was City land and it was surrounded by County neighborhoods, proper neighborhood notification never took place. By comparison, the County has been pushing John Black for nearly two years to work with the community to fashion a site plan the neighbors could support. The Black process has been public, extended, and open. Not, keep in mind, because John Black chose to do it that way. His process was open to the community because the County forced him to open it up. And when he still wouldn't listen to the community and did his site plan the way he wanted to anyway, it was denied. Properly so.
These cases also show the extent to which the County Commission is making decisions based on local plans and the extent to which plans don't seem to really matter to the City. When it came down to it, whether or not Commissioners liked John Black or were swayed by the possibility of a big County tax boost, the fact remained that his development did not meet the requirements of the Southwest Area Plan. Enough said. Case closed. As it should be.
Just for fun, let's imagine what might have happened if the Black development was on yet another piece of annexed-for-tax-purposes City land:
- When County planners and officials complained to the City that they were sticking the County with all the unintended costs of dense commercial development - like roads, infrastructure, public safety, and more - the City would play the tax game, denying the legitimacy of County protests by saying that the County was just jealous they wouldn't be getting the tax boost.
- Plans? What do you mean? We usually ignore those, anyway.
- When County residents - the ones who actually live near this site and have to live with its consequences - started organizing, City officials would just scoff at them, talking about how "reactionary" and "anti-growth" this County's rural residents are, ignoring their smart pleas to move the development to a more appropriate location that the Southwest Area Plan would support.
- And then, of course, the City would also add that the residents just wanted the site moved to County land so the County could get the tax benefits. Since, of course, rural residents are so concerned about county tax rolls and just fake their concern for maintaining their rural quality of life.
For more on this decision, see the New West Network's When Neighborhood Organizing Works. I just discovered Emily Esterson's blog and like it a lot.
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