Voters in Lafayette will decide through a mail-in election on February 27, 2007 whether or not to approve an annexation request by the owners of a 32-acre parcel of land on the city's eastern edge. The development plans on the table, if approved, would include a Lowe's hardware store.
There are organized groups in support and opposition to the annexation. I was one of those citizens called by a pollster a couple weeks ago asking various growth and quality of life related questions that were obviously hired by the annexation supporters. The questions referenced the decline Louisville has seen in its revenue since Home Depot opened in Boulder and asked a lot of questions to gauge my level of support/appreciation for jobs, development, open space, Lowe's in particular, traffic, etc. There was a particularly interesting question that remarked on the amount of sales tax a Lowe's would generate; another series of questions asked for my opinion of various officials.
I also received an email alert regarding a petition from ProgressNow.org that is seeking people's online signatures to oppose the opposition. See that link here.
Read their language with a skeptical eye. Words like "the only thing that separates Old Town Lafayette from explosive growth.." and "open the floodgates for contiguous strip malls..." are insultingly sweeping and unsubstantiated. At the very least, asking people to sign a petition based on a paragraph of information, with no references to further detail and context, is insulting to intelligent citizens. Give some kind of "click here for the facts" that we can assess and debate.
I'm researching the claims re: environmental impact of the proposed development. I perceive two reasons to vote against annexation: Blanket philosophical anti-growth mentality, or more specific anti-"this development and its impacts" rationale. I reject the former outright and I'm investigating the claims to the latter. I would guess the ProgressNow petition is aimed at those in camp #1 and those that live in the adjacent neighborhood.
Here's some background on the supporters and opposition in the Lafayette News.
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4 comments:
This almost disappeared from the front page without comment?
While I agree with much of Dan's analysis, there is a flip flop in our positions on taking a principled stand. I will debate on the technicalities nine times out of ten, but, in this case, while I may agree with you about the technicalities, I'm willing to put all that aside and see if there is really an important philosophical question underneath it all.
Should we reject outright any sort of blanket anti-growth philosophy? If you take it at face value (after all, there very likely is an ultimate "carrying capacity" or similar ecological limits strained by human population demand), it is plausible that urban growth must both reach some limit and retool to focus on long-term sustainability.
Buzzwords, maybe, but the theory is sound, and I am glad we have this debate in our community.
Nonetheless, the application to Lafayette is to disregard the comp plan or call for the comp plan to be opened up for revision ad hoc. I believe the current comp plan is sound, but it also says that the City should engage in sub-area planning, especially to avoid conflicts caused by economic development.
Perhaps the comp plan should be looked at for the eastern flank of Lafayette - in fact, I believe it should be a sub-area planning priority. But the comprehensive land use plan is the proper context to debate what a piece of land in the City "should" be.
The upcoming special election is about complying with the city's plan or defying the city's plan. Voting no as an act of defiance has an alluring justification (the City's comp plan may be flawed, too loose, contrary to better defined City goals, etc.), but my philosophy is that the comprehensive planning process deserves some respect. If it needs to be looked at, sub-area plan.
Do voters understand that the jurisdictional wetlands (at the eastern edge of the Waneka properties, nearest to the Coal Creek) are planned for preservation if at all possible, on both the current Lafayette comprehensive plan and the City's open space and trails master plan? Do the voters know that the 32 acres that we are about to vote on in Lafayette is identified on neither of those documents as open space or undeveloped land?
I'm glad Dan is going to be researching and writing about the technicalities. There are certainly impacts associated with urbanization of the mile east of Lafayette Old Town. There are also existing, regional problems that should be abated by development.
However, one consequence of voting no in Lafayette would be to force the store to consider alternate locations. What if a store is just across the city limits in Erie? What if Lafayette's sales tax base fails to meet projections and acquisition of open space falls behind when the majority of voters have said they want to make it bigger?
If development of a Lowe's would do some damage to wildlife values or even the intangible values of the City's popular Vision Statement, how significant is the damage?
What would it take to preserve 32 acres in eastern Boulder County as open space, an organic farm, or other low-intensity use?
I have thought a lot about the question that is being put to Lafayette voters this February, and I believe a vote either way is fraught with consequences. I do have the most difficulty with the bottom line on no.
It seems to me that: (1) There is no one to buy the 32 acres of Chuck Waneka's land if it has no development value. It is also an economic hardship to farm the land, which no one has stepped forward to assume (except for Chuck Waneka throwing up his hands in the interview with Quentin). (2) Highway 7 is a big market, and the economic reality is that the corridor will have a Lowe's as close to eastern Lafayette as possible, outside of Lafayette's control if necessary.
A Citizens for Lafayette newsletter was just published, and it is worth checking out. There is no direct comment about Lowe's. Instead, Karen talks about capitalizing on Lafayette's uniqueness as the primary goal of economic development, or the primary goal of land use planning, or something... It's an interesting point, and I am thankful there are people out there with the gumption to bring it up.
I agree that Lafayette should not squander its unique attributes. In many ways, for example, Public Road should be encouraged to fluorish, it has incredible potential. The question is whether or not the build-out of the entire city can (or should)include (concurrently, or exclusively): revitalization, a large commercial tax base (e.g., big boxes), delivery of a higher than average level of service for parks, recreation, seniors, community programs, and a list of competing goals that goes on and on...
The Waneka annexation referendum is not a black and white issue. As I've noted, I believe there are two critical questions that the plea for preservation must answer: First, is open space or subsidized agriculture an affordable option for the City, or anybody, in this location? Second, are there undesireable or unintended consequences outside of achieving the immediate goal of preserving one specific tract of land?
There is definitely a question in my mind about whether voting no in the special election can provide any kind of reassuring answer to those critical questions.
Thanks Alex- What do you mean by this: "There are also existing, regional problems that should be abated by development." What would development in this area do to abate any regional problem? What are the regional problems? Is the problem, that Erie, Brighton, Broomfield have the lock on Hwy 7 commercial interests?
I think Lafayette would do well to leave this area alone and concentrate on commercial along the 287 corridor, South Boulder road, and Public. These are also major routes through our city. S Boulder will be if the exit from the NW Parkway ever happens.
I would like to think of this section of town as the welcome sign to Boulder County and a different way of viewing development. It's quite similar to coming down 287 into Boco or hwy 36 in the city of Boulder. You feel like you've left the crazy development of greater Denver and entered something different. Isn't that worth something? Maybe not.
-Cyclorado
As incongruous as it might seem, the coexistence of sales tax generating land uses and open space is essential to any vision that we would like to implement by virtue of the City government.
Obviously nothing should or really does stand in the way of land being put into open space status by private means. But that isn't likely to happen, and hasn't, on a parcel of land that has no attributes that really set it apart as being of regional or national significance. We might all agree that having an uninterrupted mile of buffer this side of Broomfield would be nice, to announce one's arrival in a distinct place, but that doesn't rise very high on the list of priorities for land trusts and other organizations that are specifically interested in critical habitat, national landmarks, and so forth. Those who choose to vote no in the upcoming election are welcome to prove me wrong by donating generously (and I do mean generously) to an organization that has the mission and wherewithall to preserve land of local significance. For preservation of even 32 acres, out of about 200 undeveloped acres within the urban growth boundary on Lafayette's eastern flank, at least $1,000,000 is likely to be necessary - just a guess, but probably not on the too-high side...
What is at issue in the election is the notion that government action or inaction, but the policy of Lafayette government in either case, as determined by a vote of the people, can dictate the balance between open space and commercial. That is an attractive proposition, but land use planning has a way of backfiring when the fundamental balance is lost. Ironically, Louisville overbuilt its commercial, and one of the things that allowed that to work temporarily was that Lafayette could not attract retailers to capture its own internal market. I really sympathize with the idea that we should not make the same mistake in Lafayette, but the fact is that Lafayette's commercial base remains substantially smaller than comparable cities, and sale tax revenues are the lifeblood of everything in the city from basic services to open space.
The City would do well to focus on existing commercial areas, but at the same time, government policy can't force commercial growth where the market doesn't want to be. That is the experience in Louisville. The choice of some retailers looking at the Lafayette trade area will be to look at greenfields or the next town, period. And when faced with that situation, we put the best laid land use plans of the city (including the open space plan) in peril if we choose to believe that a balance supportive of open space acquisition can be achieved while revenues are being throttled.
Like I said, $1,000,000 dropping from the sky to purchase open space from Chuck Waneka might prove me wrong. But even then, the critical wetlands are to the east of the land we'll be voting about. What if Chuck is left with undevelopable land at the signalized intersection by virtue of the next election, but sells the land to the east to a developer to support his farming hardships or have any sort of income at all? What if this developer proposes a new annexation and a new big box on this different piece of land, even closer to the environmental resource, closer to Coal Creek, completely in the middle of the desired buffer, and still designated as developable by the comp plan and the fact that something could probably be cramed on that land without technically encroaching on the wetlands?
It seems to me that securing open space and implementing a rational plan, rather than leaving land in limbo, is the best thing to do. It is quite possible that a sub-area plan for the eastern flank would reveal a new set of values or refine the picture of what might happen in this area, but voting no on annexation does nothing more than stall the reckoning that needs to happen.
To answer Cyclorado's specific question, my statement about development should abate existing regional problems came from thinking about the traffic issues on Highway 7. Capacity and alignment are the first two categories of improvements that come to mind, but I'm not really privy to any of the preliminary planning that CDOT and local governments are working on. All I know is that desparately needed improvements probably cost money, and a monied developer may be obligated to get those improvements of the ground in concert with mitigating the specific impacts of their own development. I don't think that this annexation and zoning will solve all the City or the region's problems - not by a long shot - but, in context, regulation can (SHOULD) obligate a land user to abate impacts of development.
Alex makes some good points and I share in his struggle to reconcile what is with what should be (cognitive dissonance?). Would I prefer the land remain undeveloped? As a private citizen, you bet! As a member of city council I must put my personal preferences aside and consider all the issues Alex mentions and many more. In all of this we should not lose sight of the fact that an honest old farmer has become a human pinball in this issue through no fault of his own. If this annexation is defeated, I too sincerely hope that the opposing forces can raise the money to provide him with a viable alternative.
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