Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
Why do you oppose Fresh & Easy? This project will activate a currently blighted corner and bring activity and life to a grossly underutilized neighborhood. Why should the applicant go through all the trouble and expense to redesign their building just because you don't like it?
Kevin Johnson has gone to great lengths to attract business to Oak Park. If you support his efforts, why are you trying to sabotage it by opposing Fresh & Easy's current configuration? They're a big company with a lot of experience, and it is their money at risk here, don't you think they would have considered how to best orient the building and told their designer to reflect that best orientation? Why do you think you have the right to oppose this project? Doesn't Fresh & Easy have the right to do what they want with their property?
There's no real reason to oppose this development, other than a bunch of NIMBY attitudes and quibbling about unimportant details.
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I don't think many people oppose Fresh and Easy going in there, and the efforts to bring business in are certainly highly valued. I wouldn't call the corner blighted---it's just empty. The opposition is that the Fresh and Easy lot is in the middle of the Broadway Commercial Character Area, and did not follow the Urban Development guidelines for that area. These guidelines specifically do not allow a parking lot on Broadway, and especially on the corner, and require a zero sidewalk setback. All the other buildings that exist and the other new development that is currently planned adjacent this development and along this stretch of the historic district are zero setback and with off-street parking in the back, if any.
That area of Oak Park has the same development guidelines as Midtown (though specific to Oak Park), and surely you wouldn't have seen a surface parking lot on the sidewalk in Midtown proposed in a new development, especially on a main mixed-use street, like J Street for instance. I feel Oak Park deserves no less than that minimum standard.
The residents simply want to move the building up to the sidewalk as per the guidelines, and per basic successful urban planning models. As stated in one of the community meetings, the neighborhood's proposed reorienting of the building would actually save the developer money due to a reduction in number of driveways, no longer a need for utility pole relocation or removal of an existing street tree, put a cement plaza instead of a maintenance-requiring landscape buffer, and remove the need for the twisted cantilevered corner tower with a blind exit door under it which is how they currently touch the Broadway sidewalk, and remove the need for a suburban-style corner pillar sign, which the guidelines also do not allow. The building's own signage would also become far more visible, helping to ensure the success of the business, which everyone wants. The developer is coming into this with an outdated 60's planning model where automobiles rule, but Oak Park and the design guidelines are more forward-looking. Also, more than half of the people in Oak Park don't own cars, either due to cost or by choice.
In my opinion the best model for a successful development of this lot would be a minimal setback (but enough for the street tree canopy) multi-story mixed use with Fresh and Easy and a few other retailers on the ground floor with office and low and medium-income housing above. But as for what was proposed, it just needs to meet the Design Guidelines.
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HA!!! that's a good one... good luck with that 
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