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Boise Neighborhood Association
12/12/05 General Meeting Minutes
Adgenda:
- Announcments
- Intros
- Unthank Park Improvements
- Mississippi Lofts
- PSU presentation
- Volunteer for commiti\ees
- Drug free zone survey
- Presentation to Kurisu
Intros:
Unthank Park Improvements
Marcine Kment here to announce possible $20k for Unthank Park improvements. Wants to get people thinking about ideas for the park. New benches are most feasible for this amount of money. Bricks and motor development 20,000. items on list covered by urban renewal:
Lighting, path, benches, playground equipment, drainage 50 -80,0000, tree pruning, new park sing, ada assessable. money from urban renewal is use it or lose it.
Mississippi Lofts Project:
- Bill Jackson codeveloper: 4038 N Mississippi
- Jeff Mcgraw AND Peter Wilcox
- Plans: Originally planned to develop a 2800 sq ft property
- scaled back plans: Changes reducing size 25% 15,000 sq ft
- 4 story mix use with res. and commercial
- to reduce scale on street brought property in ten feet on each side.
intention to develop sustainably with certification like leed called green globes.
- worked with community to the best of ability encouraging local business, looking for local businesses to fill spots.
- looking to reduce energy, such as fossil fuels through flex cars. Create greater density with out hurting community. Energy efficient building materials. reusing building materials from consisting materials. Improve air quality with natural design. Storm water management, exploring gray water and photalvotaics, as well as life cycle of building and effects on the community in the long hall.
- Peter Wilcox from the community as a developer with affordable and sustainable building.
- Peter: 27 car park with 1 to 1 bike parking. Ally will be one way. Trying to get a small grocery, its a focus.
- Asking for a letter of support from the Boise Neighborhood Association.
- Response from neighbors: NE is neighbors. RE is response from developers.
- Ne: It seems huge for the neighbor hood. It will be the tallest structure on Mississippi. Will be taller than the John Plamer house which is at the top of the hill.
- RE: yes to maintain affordability and displacement we need high density.
Preserve single family off main drags. We are building less high than we can. Height limit is 45 ft
- NE: Building is economically upscaling and force neighbors out. doesn’t matter if its green its hurting people in the neighborhood. Gentrification.
- RE: everyone entitaled to opinion. this is for diversity of neighborhood. Maybe its also a positive influence.
- Motioned to extend time limit on topic to 20mins.
- NE: Traffic density is increasing. This project will cause it to increase more. Issue of livability and impact of autos.
- RE: For nine months we’ve been coming to community and its not necessary for us to do it. We have been studying this for a long time to look at all other projects like us to understand impact.
- NE: At the developement meeting most of the community wasn’t there and there are a lot of new people here that weren’t talked to. Could you put together another meeting that everyone could come to.
- NE: What is affordable housing,
- RE: not affordable housing its affordable market rate. not belmont not hawthorn.
- NE: How does this fit the Albina community plan. We wanted to keep families This is 200,000 and over.
- RE: Albina wanted diversity, this brings in higher income young families.
- NE: The community has not been actively involved. The only reason that people know is through word of mouth. You didn’t flier neighborhood. Why haven’t people directly effected noticed.
- RE: We e-mailed.
- NE: Not all of us have e-mail.
- RE: Until we knew our intentions we didn’t want to involve community.
- NE: Did you contact the businesses or community?
- NE: What are the numbers and the cost of housing, as well as size of living space. Is it private funds.
- RE: Units start at 780sqft - 200,000 biggest are in the $450,000 If we get grant for sustainable building that will be public money. Also through Dos funds.
- NE: what's the bench mark ot the project?
- RE: waiting for estimate, 7,500,000. looking into how to make available to first time home buyers program?
- NE: Concerns 1 this is not the type of develop that we need. This is increasing the burden on those of us that are renters and first time home buyers is making it unaffordable to the rest of us 2: physical construction is huge for our street.
- NE: Business owners are the ones that will benefit from this not the neighbors.
- NE: How far are you in the permitting process? How will design fit in neighbor hood?
- RE: They are months away from permits.
- NE: Is there any intention to scale down with out pent houses. You will get more support with out high prices.
- RE: If we could get the PDC money to do so we would.
- NE: Where do we go from here. Your going to build with support or not.
- Chair sums up: There have been a lot of concerns, based on a change in neighborhood, gentrification, traffic, building size cost of units and not contacting community.
- Business response: Belmont went through the same thing. Assisted care facility is going to quadruple size. These developers came to meetings and are trying.
- Lets give credit to these developers for coming the community.
- Motion to vote on a letter of support for recommendation. No means we don’t write a letter of support Yes means we write a letter of support.
- We can not write a letter of support at this time.
- 14 yes 24 no 23 abstain.
- They can readdress at a later date.
PSU:
Three things help neighborhood. 1) Take development focus off miss. Suggest for neighbor hood like William's and vancouver. Less boutiques and more services the community needs like sliding scale clinic grocery, and hardware, employ 75% of neighborhood with living wage. Look at minority businesses in neighborhood. 2) Affordable housing, housing being built now isn’t affordable. Home buying being the best option. Cooperative housing, good model. House buying with others. Apartment complex bottom floor businesses run buy people living in apt building. 3) Community center.
DFZ
jon ross made a drug free zone survey. nicole gives an overview of where the drug free zone. zone is a tool used by the police to give a citation to drug dealers.
Discussion on Drug free Zone. Racist or not, does it work report backs from previous meetings
See results of the survey and resulting letter to the city here.