20070926mtg

Report of Meeting with Merchants, NSPI, LOCCNA liaisons

26 Sep 2007

My view is that the Sept 26 meeting between the Loccna liaisons, the North Shattuck Merchants Ass'n, and North Shattuck Plaza, Inc. went quite well. The liaisons submitted four major items to the agenda and all were included, although we didn't discuss them all.

During the discussion, Helen Villet of NSPI said the Plaza plan "in its present form" is "off the table. However phrases like "significant public open space," "major public works project," and "significant pedestrian walkway,"Êcontinued to come from NSPI people and from Heather Hensley, the executive director of the merchants ass'n. We referred the group to the Loccna Vision Statement, which Margot Smith handed out to everyone, which says the proposed Plaza is unacceptable.

Tom Ford, a planner who is on the board of the merchants ass'n chaired the meeting. He seemed to be pushing for a new process to figure out what should happen between Vine and Rose Sts. Allen Connally from Earthly Goods suggested the process begin with the merchants, because the funds to do anything in the area would ultimately come from the merchants via the taxes they pay to the Business Improvement District. Henry Wong, who owns the Laundromat and the two adjacent buildings said any major construction would put him and other merchants on the block out of business.

Peggy Mendelson from Loccna, who attended at the request of the liaisons, pointed out that the weakness of the plaza plan was that it was "top down" planning without real public input. In contrast, the North Shattuck Area plan which she helped develop in the early 80's was a "bottom up" process and that approach was successful, although city officials are now ignoring important elements of it.

Allen Connally said the key issues for the merchants were more parking for customers and employees, cleanliness and elimination of panhandling. He again proposed that the merchants initiative the apparently new planning process. There was no objection either from the Loccna liaisons (Margot Smith, Julie Ross, Art Goldberg) or from NSPI.

Allen is to meet with Heather Hensley and Tom Ford of the merchants ass'n in the next few weeks. They will bring what they come up with to another meeting with the Loccna liaisons and NSPI, probably in November. What happens after that is still to be decided, although we made it clear there had to be considerable public input on any proposal that might emerge from these meetings.

-Art Goldberg

PS. Mary Ann Brewin was unable to attend this meeting, but she was the key person at the liaison meeting, helping us to formulate our agenda items and getting them on the agenda.