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Comments
Bob
This certainly looks like a far better plan than Palindromes. But doesn’t it need about 100 more parking spaces? I drive Alpiine twice per week. There is absolutely zero off street parking between 8th and 14th - including McMarket. That area does have great potential. But that will be wasted if the city doesn’t force area landowners to pay for co-developing adequate parking for apartment renters, retail customers, AND EMPLOYEES.
Bigfootlives
It seems to me that nothing will spur development faster in a boutique, high end, wine, third street extension wannabe like 171 low income apartments. With not enough parking spaces. This is a perfect example of why city employees, councilors, mayors, and county commissioners for that matter, should be held criminally liable for the financial decisions they make.
I wonder what ever happened to that city audit the mayor campaigned on.
BC
Is there a difference between "affordable housing" and "low-income" housing as far as property taxes go? Is there an exemption or exception on subsidized housing property taxes? How about affordable housing?
I'm curious because if the city (& urban renewal) want to make up what has been spent to get this to the point of being off the list of assets, they're probably going to want to re-coup the losses somewhere.
Having said that, I still am thrilled that this is finally moving forward (albeit, I hope this gets revamped to include more parking).
B
Seems like MURAC could use a few more Dan Gibsons.
BC
Never mind - I should read for comprehension....
Bigfootlives
We need to replace the City Council with a bunch of Dan Gibsons.
Ron
Good Comments Bob. There will never be parking on Alpine because of that design with the steel and the flower pots. That was an automobile deterrent from the start now we have the tiny homes on Alpine and the new boutique hotel with no parking. In my opinion, affordable housing became a nationwide term for the politicians to run on. Whatever it’s called affordable housing, low income, or section 8 or any other polite name they hang on it. It’s funded by tax money whether it’s state local or federal. You rarely hear about Habitat for Humanity/self-help that is hardly mentioned anymore. That’s where people would go out on the weekends with their little Hard Hats on and build a home with volunteers and when that house got done they moved onto the next house. People ended up working hard getting a house on a lot with a tiny garage that they deserve to have.Working hard and getting something out of it unlike the apartment dwellers that live in subsidize housing living on the dole big difference. Sadly, those people will never have a real home. They won’t move out & leave the free money they receive every month.
Ron
Sorry everybody I Skipped another Sad very Sad part to this story.
The greedy developers love it because their revenue is guaranteed backed by the government.
So who wins?
shauna
I live in the adjacent neighborhood and have concerns with the new proposal. The developer proposes 117 parking spaces for 171 housing units. Using the standard citywide multifamily requirement, the proposed apartments would require 263 parking spaces rather than the 117 parking spaces the developer has proposed. In other words, the project proposes about 150 fewer spaces than the standard code formula would require for this mix of units. If you drive through the adjacent neighborhood, you will see that the streets are already lined with cars because many older homes don't have garages or long driveways.
The city has not shared a neighborhood-level traffic study for 8th/10th/Alpine/Lafayette, even though the additional housing will increase the traffic/trips in the area. Based on Institute of Transportation Engineers trip generation rates for multifamily housing (commonly 6–8 trips per unit per weekday) and ODOT’s own guidance, 171 units would be expected to generate roughly 900–1,000 vehicle trips per day. Those of us in the neighborhood know how busy 8th/Lafayette/5th streets are during business hours. This would add to the congestion and likely increase traffic through the neighborhood, which is residential housing/primarily single-family homes. The city has not proposed any mitigation.
Finally, the early 20th century homes in the area adjacent to the proposed development are part of the city’s historic residential fabric that city’s policies are intended to conserve and respect, not overwhelm with out-of-scale new construction. A thoughtful plan could add new housing while reinforcing, rather than eroding, the qualities that make these historic blocks so attractive to current and future residents.
MBert70
100% what Shauna's concern with Lafayette Avenue traffic and the surrounding streets. The traffic on any given day NOW is horrific over in that area. We tend to forget about the infrastructure that is never addressed during this projects.
Bob
Shauna, Ron, and MBert70 are right. The entire Alpine area from 5th to 14th is already a transportation and access nightmare at rush hours during the school year. And absolutely NO off-street parking inside the district. So the math of providing only 117 parking space for 171 apartments makes no sense. But the city does need to bail out of the financial disaster our past mayor left them dealing with. So, buckle up!
One potential positive is that tonight’s NR (1/14) had an article that stated the city is doing traffic studies on Lafayette Ave. and between 5th and 14th. If they plan further development inside Alpine that will create lots more in/out traffic, city council sure owes surrounding residents a much more efficient traffic flow on mentioned streets. And about 1,000 more parking spaces within the Alpine District that in the future will have to handle all the residents, employees, customers, and delivery vans needed to service those two mid-block boutique hotels (and restaurants) that offer zero on-site parking. I have no faith our city planning director is really interested in those problems. But at least two newer councilors have been vocal on questioning traffic impacts of new developments proposed west of Hill Road. Hopefully those councilors can convince the other council members to actually follow city ordinances designed to protect taxpaying citizens from having new developments causing unfair quality of life damages to surrounding residents. That certainly was not the position of the past city council, or ourcity planning director. I am hoping that our new mayor and new councilors do a better job of representing the interests of taxpaying residents. Unfortunately for you, the development of Alpine is a perfect test case for the rest of us citizens.