Whose vision?
The Astoria City Council's vision is in on Astoria's waterfront, and it happens to coincide with the developers building condo complexes from 6th Street, west of downtown, to 39th St., east. The latest approval encountered the most resistance, but the pattern is clear. The council supports a vision that includes multi-story residential buildings along the waterfront, scattered west to east.
Under our current political system, the council's vision is the one that counts. That's all fine, except the council promised the city's residents a year ago a visioning process to decide the fate of the various development proposals on the books, and those to come. At that time, the council and their appointed planning commission was handed a petition signed by almost 500 people that demanded the visioning process and a way to stem the tide of development until the process was completed. Promises to undergo the visioning, and apologies for not starting, have been coming from the council ever since. Meanwhile, the condos, subdivisions and other projects have been approved every single time they have been proposed, with the exception of the Bornstein proposal, which was withdrawn by the applicants, saying they wanted to participate in the visioning and abide by its conclusions.
The optimist in me sees a visioning process unfolding before my eyes, in the guise of the official processing of development applications. The testimony given by hundreds of citizens in dozens of hearings in the last year has in it many different visions for our Columbia River waterfront. The Daily Astorian has published hundreds of letters to the editor that detail our differing visions for the waterfront. HIPFiSH has featured an article on the various proposals to develop land on and by the water, with some renderings of developers' visions for their little strip of land. In talking with the proponents and opponents of these projects, I wrote down several interesting visions of the waterfront. I think it would be a great idea to gather all these visions in one (very public) place, and have residents add to them their own, and/or give the visions a thumbs up or down. It would save the city a lot of consultant money, and it would be fun!
The skeptic in me sees a lot of time, energy and money spent on a process that had an inevitable ending. I'm talking now about the hearing process that just culminated in the approval of the Englund project, but which along the way has seen other approvals of various projects, and which portends even further approvals of anything that comes up, especially if it's proposed by a local developer/land owner. My skeptical side doesn't see the official visioning process giving much added value to the visioning already done under the auspices of the process described above. And if the whole thing is beholden to the city council for a final vote, then we're back to where we are now. The council gets the final say.
The erosion of the power of zoning to control development means that other mechanisms may be needed to do the job. (That is, if simple economics doesn't do the job for us.) Clearly, the current system is way too divisive, and not nearly democratic enough. Or, to put it another way, it's not fair.
Let's see if we can save a lot of time, money and energy (all things we all need more of), and come up with a system or process that can bring us forward as a city with regards to our wonderful Columbia River waterfront, and then extend that process or system to the whole city, so we can focus our time, energy and money on things like education, our environment, the arts, and an appreciation of all the wonderful things we have here.
Under our current political system, the council's vision is the one that counts. That's all fine, except the council promised the city's residents a year ago a visioning process to decide the fate of the various development proposals on the books, and those to come. At that time, the council and their appointed planning commission was handed a petition signed by almost 500 people that demanded the visioning process and a way to stem the tide of development until the process was completed. Promises to undergo the visioning, and apologies for not starting, have been coming from the council ever since. Meanwhile, the condos, subdivisions and other projects have been approved every single time they have been proposed, with the exception of the Bornstein proposal, which was withdrawn by the applicants, saying they wanted to participate in the visioning and abide by its conclusions.
The optimist in me sees a visioning process unfolding before my eyes, in the guise of the official processing of development applications. The testimony given by hundreds of citizens in dozens of hearings in the last year has in it many different visions for our Columbia River waterfront. The Daily Astorian has published hundreds of letters to the editor that detail our differing visions for the waterfront. HIPFiSH has featured an article on the various proposals to develop land on and by the water, with some renderings of developers' visions for their little strip of land. In talking with the proponents and opponents of these projects, I wrote down several interesting visions of the waterfront. I think it would be a great idea to gather all these visions in one (very public) place, and have residents add to them their own, and/or give the visions a thumbs up or down. It would save the city a lot of consultant money, and it would be fun!
The skeptic in me sees a lot of time, energy and money spent on a process that had an inevitable ending. I'm talking now about the hearing process that just culminated in the approval of the Englund project, but which along the way has seen other approvals of various projects, and which portends even further approvals of anything that comes up, especially if it's proposed by a local developer/land owner. My skeptical side doesn't see the official visioning process giving much added value to the visioning already done under the auspices of the process described above. And if the whole thing is beholden to the city council for a final vote, then we're back to where we are now. The council gets the final say.
The erosion of the power of zoning to control development means that other mechanisms may be needed to do the job. (That is, if simple economics doesn't do the job for us.) Clearly, the current system is way too divisive, and not nearly democratic enough. Or, to put it another way, it's not fair.
Let's see if we can save a lot of time, money and energy (all things we all need more of), and come up with a system or process that can bring us forward as a city with regards to our wonderful Columbia River waterfront, and then extend that process or system to the whole city, so we can focus our time, energy and money on things like education, our environment, the arts, and an appreciation of all the wonderful things we have here.
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