It's a Deja Vu all over again ...

At the end of June my neighborhood joined together to contest yet another very large apartment complex and extending a street through to the Loop 250 access road. In our neighborhood between the major streets that border us we have 3 apartment complexes, 1 hotel and a handful of various retail stores and restaurants. During the city council meeting in which we had a very large contingency we were told that basically the council would look into resurrecting a former council ordinance on making Whitman a Cul-de-sac and the present council took no action on the complex, thus killing the project. The mayor himself said we need to give these folks "some relief" and make a final decision on Whitman and the vacant land. When we left the meeting everyone had the general impression that the project was DOA and was hoping some day to see a cul-de-sac built. 

NOT SO FAST, today once again the neighborhood will have to join together to fight the very some project that we contested before, exactly the same. This time we hope to "nip it in the bud" so to speak with the Planning and Zoning Commission and finally put this thing to bed forever. While at the meeting we were informed that traffic on our relatively quiet street would go from a typical 200 cars a day to an enormous 700 PLUS! basically ruining our neighborhood. So I hope the city can live up to what the mayor said before by "giving these folks some relief" but based on some other issues they have "resolved" recently, I wonder...

Update: The Planning and Zoning Commission approved a slightly different plan, Whitman would be "walled off" and some buildings would be reduced to 2 stories to maintain privacy for neighborhood backyards. Our concerns and petition did not concern the PZC saying that locating the complex there would not effect home values, crime, traffic etc. anymore than it would effect any other neighborhood. I was reminded of a quote when I read our neighborhood bulletin board ... The City Council promised us that NO apartment complex will be built there while the current council is in control, let hope they can keep their word better than what they told us one week about the City Mgr. and did the very opposite the next. August the 28th we'll find out.