as it is currently proposed, is intellectually dishonest. It is not building trust to try to convince people of these things.
It will be approved and it will be a less than stellar version, right out of the gate, of what it could be if it were truly planned to be sustainable and really meant to be a wonderful "town center" and things were ready for it to succeed.
The majority of people like, even love, excitement and prestige, not to mention convenience, and also wealth. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not free. Neither is decay nor the dreaded "creeping blight."
I don't feel good about subsidizing other people's profit dreams to such a large extent these days.
I do hope that once things get cooking up at the locale that it offers a real "sense of place" (the catch phrase of the "new urbanists" who are not all that new). It will be a destination and draw a lot of people who don't live there if it is built like the models mentioned, for a while. (The highway was jammed, the frontage roads were jammed, and the streets were jammed up Saturday night outside of one of those "places." I hope that means the economy is pulling upward more than it means bad town planning.) I'm not being mean, but the models mentioned are not that sustainable and they aren't going to be long lived "places" much more than any mall or any other massive apartment complex is.
I hope it is a wonderful place to live for those who live there. I hope the apartments are not built as cheaply as most all of the ones that have preceded it over the last ten years.
I hope it's a wonderful place to shop and that it offers a place for people to buy groceries for the times they do not or can't eat out, like when they get tired of the four major restaurants, or ten or more when all the other density goes in on the other tracts, if something other than apartments comes as it is being sold. And I hope that it has hotel space for relatives to stay for the holidays and for convention events and parties.
And I hope a lot of jobs come there for the apartment dwellers even if it is after the fact and even if most people who live there do not work there (more people than jobs). And whether people who work there can afford to live there or not.
For the ones who do not want to use a vehicle or give up private transportation, I hope there is improved, viable travel options, like real bus service and rail and other things, that gets them where they need to go. Since this is TOD, there won't be as much parking if the TOD theory is correct. Parking should not be a problem and if it is, you will need to give up your driving, and vehicles.
As you can tell, I am hopeful, but skeptical and I think I have very good reason to be.
I hope that people are not surprised when the Renner (beautiful) parkway toward the east is made into more lanes, especially the bridge over Rowlett Creek (the bond paid report will confirm that it must be made wider, more lanes) and that people know that grade separations are going to come on line soon in the area, like at Plano at Greenville, and Plano Rd at Renner Rd. And they shouldn't be surprised when what they thought was the nature area across the road is built upon because the north area is private land, not city park land, and even if it was park land it doesn't mean it's off limits or anything, it wasn't.
I hope our taxes do not go up more to support it all because the truth is this "place" won't "pay for itself."
If you haven't noticed, our taxes never go down, they are outstripping inflation and interest, when all these developer dreams come to town and they collect subsidies to boot. One reason is lack of planning by and for residents, lack of care, the developers make the sale, set up to make the profit, spread it around to just the right person or people to convince and sell it to well-meaning and enlightened people to be completely for it and not to ask too many questions and not to give too many answers. But most developers and people who do not live by it, aren't that interested in sense of community in the location, here today, gone tomorrow. Those not right next to a development living in Richardson just want some shopping one to three miles closer. To them trade off for that is worth it, to others it is not.
The money we gave and give to roads have not gone to roads, such as when the local road maintenance prior allotment was used to pay for the Eisemann Center dream debt service when things did not pan out as dreamed and sold and how the money sent to the state for transportation has not been used fully for transportation for the majority of people (but for perhaps special friends).
The crime doesn't go down when dense apartments move into an area. Traffic doesn't reduce in the area. Air pollution doesn't get better. Education levels do not go up and the dropout rate doesn't decrease. Local schools don't seem to get better because of dense apartments even though the schools get more money with increased head count (so far). The divorce rate doesn't go down (except there are less marriages and more single household family situations). The neighborhood services budget for apartments doesn't decrease and the fee doesn't cover the increase. Apartments are not any more dream-like than anything else.
Well managed apartments have a place in most communities. We need apartments, for transitional use, for corporate use, for single lifestyle use, for empty nesters who want an apartment, for families that decide it is healthier to split than stay in a situation, and some rights have been given for apartments, etc. that should be accepted. Apartments are not evil. It is what comes with poorly thought out plans that could be called that.
Richardson is growing more apartment-heavy. After a point, it doesn't seem like a high proportion of apartments adds to sense of place or community that is good unless elements are in place to make it work and have that "sense of place" that urban planners, architects, politicians, developers and environmentalists are seeking to create by building high density in suburbs.
And public-private partnerships are often much more expensive to taxpayers in the long run when it comes to supporting high density utensils than if taxpayers would just pay for them (but can't because they are being jacked up for everything else and everyone else that they shouldn't have to be paying for, like other people's dreams and utensils and planning honchos' and politicians' steak dinners and retreats, and they do not take public transportation to their retreats).
Architects, urban planners and developers have dreams, even nostalgic dreams. Businesses want the traffic and pool of employees to tap as needed and pay less. I do wonder why people who do not share the dream have to subsidize their dreams at the expense of their own dreams, to such an extent. It is becoming too much.
So build this dreamed "sense of place." It is going to be "approved" anyway, but please don't just slap it in there with a mass of apartments hoping the rest will follow. Answer the questions that are being asked. Security and amenities are expensive, don't expect everyone else to pay for it, the developers who will make a tremendous profit need to pony up. There is still great profit if done well. Inexperience in development and finance is the major problem with another struggling development in town as much as anything.
Use form based, but do it right and not to the point of just apartments and little else. Expect to deal with noise issues more with mixed use (the updated ordinance isn't updated enough), deliveries, garbage, recycling, traffic, recreation, security/crime, air pollution and other issues that are made more challenging with higher density 24/7. Be honest with the sales pitch. Suburbanites should know that things are not going to be exactly the same...this includes good and bad things. And taxes will go up faster than inflation and interest in order to support the more dense dream as it is structured. Any local gain seems to always be spent and then some lately.
You are not going to stop this thing from being built, and the adjacent density around it that is coming, but you can make it marginally better by not nodding or flying off the handle, but by telling representatives that you helped elect and by telling the developers they need to pay attention and try to get it right. Trust me, they do not have it right as it stands. Will they listen?
The past says it is highly doubtful that this particular set will unless it is at a minimum of political placating. There's no need to. They count on, or have counted on, the anti's cutting off their own noses and the noses of people who try to be reasonable and listen so all we are left with is cagey, non forthright, politician "leaders" who are leading the majority exactly wherever they want the majority to go whether it is the right path or not and some of them have their own back stories and private goals they are more interested in.
With concerned citizens, the politicians even pretend to blame the developers who they say they have no control over to get them to do certain beneficial things, when that's just not true. But naive people believe it and repeat it, not holding them accountable and pointing fingers at only developers and commissions under the politicians. The anti's turn on each other and favor the smooth tongue politicians who won't level with them and the top politicians are free to move about the cabin.
When the phrase kept being used, "Richardson is built out," the politicians knew this was not true but they didn't want to correct the phrase and tell you the score. Richardson is not built out. The population will grow much more. I would say it will grow double in the next forty years, for one, because some guys want it to, well beyond how it would normally grow. Richardson will take on more than it's usual or proportional share of population growth. Richardson is a pro-growth city with pro-population, pro density string pullers and proteges. People complain that Plano is getting people there that should be in Richardson, desiring a larger and larger population. Whatever it takes.
Not to be rude, but some people are about twenty years, if not one year, too late to be noticing these things but they keep doing the same thing and promoting the same slippery politicians, attacking others on behalf of the great politicians who should not agree to private goals or blaming everyone but the ones they put in charge at the very top, and getting results they claim they do not want, like higher taxes, more debt, more traffic, less nature preserve, water waste. Richardson doesn't like honest politicians. Anti's and RC'ers don't want to hear what they don't want to hear. It's all a dream. Richardson wants high density. It obviously doesn't want mass transit to serve the masses to the extent it should but it wants to spend millions and millions (half of Richardson's part of sales tax collections) in Richardson each year to say it does (or to not do it). If you want to live in the burbs, go somewhere else, alright?
