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Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Midlands Voices: Departure from plan is unfair to
residents
BY KIRK MCCLURE
The writer, of Lawrence, Kan., is an associate professor of
urban planning at the University of Kansas. He testified at city
and court hearings on Papillion's Market Pointe development on
behalf of opponents.
In a Dec. 6 editorial, "'Not in my back yard,'" The World-Herald
argues that compromise is essential for growth in the area and the
good of all citizens.
Examination of the Market Pointe development proposed for
Papillion finds that it is neither a compromise nor good for all
citizens.
A compromise implies a negotiation in which each side gains
something, although less than each party might want, and each side
concedes something, though not an unreasonable amount.
The residents near the proposed Market Pointe center were given no
opportunity to negotiate. With the proposed development, they are
gaining nothing and losing much.
This is not a compromise but a sacrifice. A city's comprehensive
plan is supposed to prevent such sacrifice.
Papillion engaged in a very healthy and effective community
process when it prepared its comprehensive plan. It generated a
high-quality plan of which the community can be proud.
This document outlines a growth plan for the community that serves
the needs of all citizens. It calls for residential use on the
site of the proposed Market Pointe center and large- scale
commercial development elsewhere in the city.
The residents of neighborhoods surrounding the proposed
development site invested in their homes on the belief that the
city would uphold the comprehensive plan.
Now a developer wants to go against the plan, damaging the value
of the nearby homes. Understandably, the residents of the
surrounding neighborhoods are upset.
A developer has arbitrarily chosen a site for a regional shopping
mall that violates the plan in terms of location and of the city's
expressed goals for the neighborhood's development.
This development proposal is not a marginal deviation from
Papillion's comprehensive plan but a very large change. The city's
plan calls for residential development on the site. The developer
wants to use it entirely for commercial space.
The comprehensive plan calls for only as much commercial space as
is needed to serve the immediate neighborhood. Thus, a small
neighborhood commercial center could be developed. Such centers
usually contain less than 100,000 square feet of retail space.
The development proposal calls for more than 500,000 square feet
of "big-box" retail space, more than five times the amount
projected by the comprehensive plan.
At a half-million square feet, this is no longer a neighborhood
center. It is not even a shopping center for the community. At
this scale, it is a regional shopping center with all of the
traffic dangers and other nuisances that these centers attract.
Papillion's comprehensive plan does not prohibit the city from
exploring the development of a regional shopping center. Rather,
the plan anticipates this opportunity. Such a center could mean
more sales-tax money for the city to fund various public services.
But the plan calls for such large-scale commercial development to
be located where it would complement the major transportation
corridors and not harm the residential character of Papillion's
neighborhoods.
In Papillion, the comprehensive plan is barely two years old. Yet
it has been ignored by the City Council. The elected officials of
Papillion have chosen to act in a manner that runs counter to the
plan. They are ignoring the wishes of the residents who live in
close proximity to the Market Pointe site.
If a compromise is to be reached, what compensation would be
offered to the residents who will see the value of their homes
diminished by this very large-scale commercial development?
Would the developer or the City of Papillion pay them for these
losses? The developer has offered some landscaping and a few
design upgrades, but these would do little or nothing to
compensate the residents for the harm done.
People need to become involved in the planning and development
process. A plan is only as good as its implementation. A
comprehensive plan is a form of an agreement between a city and
its residents.
If a city chooses to ignore its plan whenever a developer proposes
an alternative, then the agreement has been broken and the good of
the community is ill-served. If the elected officials will not
carry out the expressed purposes of the plan, then the people
should work to elect officials who will.
Citizens should be able to expect a city to build only what is
planned in their back yard.
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