We had a corker of a meeting today, with discussion mainly on the Gateways Redevelopment Project (GDP), but with connections to the Station Area Plan process that’s running concurrently.

Our guests were three members of the Project Area Committee (PAC) the elected representatives of residents, business owners and organization leaders in the project area. Nancy Richards, Carol Dean and Ida Johnson related their experiences of trying to make sense of, and be effective in making the citizen input part of this project work.

The project area is enormous, which you can see on the city’s website,  Recently, two neighborhood groups, the Julliard Park and Olive Park neighborhoods petitioned successfully to withdraw from it. The biggest concerns have been over the potential use of eminent domain by the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) and the unclear nature of what the city expects citizens to sign on to. The assignment of the term “blight” has been problematic. In some cases, houses that “ are being sold under market value” is called “blight”, and this leads to mention of one of the most serious potential community results: gentrification of previously lower cost areas.

Recent history of public input processes has been similar to our guests’ experiences. Committee members are given lots of info about many subjects, but the time allotted to the really crucial few questions ends up being limited in the end. In the case of the Station Area Plan (SAP?), public input meetings ask people who show up to recommend favored development patterns in areas they’re not familiar with, and to set aside knowledge of realistic limits and just “Envision!”

The Gateways PAC started their work last September. They were, however, only given the actual plan to work on in December. For the last three months, they’ve met weekly to address serious questions about the impact of the proposed District plan. After staff recently added a few of the improvements to the language suggested by the committee, they were asked to approve the Program Plan, which would be sent to the City Council for approval. The Plan was turned down by the PAC by a vote of 5 to 4.

Next steps aren’t clear, but the PAC is determined to stay together to guide this process as much as they can, for the betterment of the area.

Anne E. Seeley