03 Oct SHCC Meeting Minutes – October 2012
SUGAR HOUSE COMMUNITY COUNCIL BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING
Meeting Minutes – October 3, 2012
SHCC Meeting Notes October 3, 2012
Present: Delores Donohoo, Annalisa Steggell, Sheila O’Driscoll, Christopher Thomas, Amy Barry, Judi Short, Rawlins Young, Michael Kavanaugh, Soren Simonsen, Benny Keele, Sarah Carlson, Laurie Bray. Excused Larry Migliaccio, Joedy Lister, Robin Baster, Cabot Nelson, Sally Barraclough.
Meeting called to order at 7:05 p.m.
Police report – Detective Boelter said that Officer Andy Leonard would be taking his place in Sugar House. He showed some stats for car prowls, etc. and compared September this year to last year. At the top is this year, and shows we are down in Larceny Theft, and Car Prowls. We should be vigilant in your neighborhoods. No longer going to be District 7 contact officer, but will still be around, I hope Fairmont Park issue is better. Bike guys will spend time and keep their eye on the park. Andy said he had been on the Swat Team, and lived in SLC since 1988. Jumped in to see there are complaints at Fairmont Aquatic Center, working on a long-term solution. Sarah asked that they patrol Parley’s Way around noon for the speeding kids going to the high school. Officer Leonard said that would be easy to enforce.
Balloting – Voting for Sugar House Community Council Officers started at 7:10 for one hour.
Soren Simonsen from the City Council made a big announcement that the Fairmont neighborhood of Sugar House was named as one of the ten great places in America. He had a certificate from the American Planning Association. Below is the Press Release, which Soren read.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 3, 2012
Contact: Art Raymond
801-547-2659
Fairmont Earns ‘Great Places’ Listing
National planning group lauds Sugar House neighborhood for history, vitality and economic resurgence
SALT LAKE CITY – Salt Lake City’s Fairmont neighborhood was recognized today as one of the 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2012 by the American Planning Association (APA) as part of their Great Places in America program.
The APA said Fairmont was singled out for its historic links, bustling town center, recreational and cultural offerings and involved residents.
Through Great Places in America, APA recognizes streets, neighborhoods, and public spaces featuring unique and authentic characteristics that have evolved from years of thoughtful and deliberate planning by residents, community leaders and planners. The 2012 Great Places have many of the features Americans say are important to their “ideal community” including locally owned businesses, transit, neighborhood parks and sidewalks. The selected places illustrate how the foresight of planning fosters tomorrow’s communities.
“The Sugar House streetcar project and the new development that it’s bringing is the most recent chapter in a resurgence story that began decades ago in our historic Fairmont neighborhood,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker. “Residents, community groups and City representatives have worked together closely to protect and enhance Fairmont’s character while carefully planning for growth. Now, all who live, work and do business in the area know it’s one of the most charming areas of the City. This recognition by the American Planning Association is well-deserved.”
Christopher asked us to look at the Tribune article and post some positive comments after the article.
Michael G Kavanaugh gave a brief report of his visit to Ireland and our sister city.
Sarah made a motion to approve minutes of the September meeting. The Council voted unanimously to approve the minutes.
Public comments for items not on the agenda. George Chapman spoke, urging us to vote against the proposal for the Park Bond. Helen Peters and Lynne Olson spoke to vote in favor of the bond.
Helen urged the scouts to take a sign and put it in their yard to demonstrate they are part of the political procsess.
Judi gave the Land Use and Zoning Report
Sugar House Land Use Report September 2012
Korean Church Master Plan Amendment – 2018 East 2100 South. This is a petition being brought by the City Council (Soren Simonsen) to amend the future Land Use Map of the Sugar House Master Plan to reflect current zoning, which is R-1. Currently, the Future Land Use Map shows it as Institutional, and this would amend that map to show it as R-1 or SR-1. The surrounding area is primarily residential, the church is on a parcel that is smaller than usual institutional parcels, and the community would like it to reflect the actual use.
Because we didn’t hear about this request until after the LUZ meeting this month, the planner, Mary Ann Pickering, will present this to the council.
Zoning Use Tables Judi, Scott Amy, Rawlins, and Joedy went through the Commercial, and Residential sections of the new Zoning Rewrite, on Open City Hall, and I wrote a summary for the Planning Commission. At the Planning Commission meeting last week, the planner said that all of these had been addressed in a later version, or in the definitions, and none of our suggestions were incorporated. Amy and I are going to go over our recommendations and see what we might want to present to the City Council.
2016 South 2100 East – This was a residential parcel that requested to be rezoned to CB. We recommended CN, and the planner recommended that the Planning Commission deny the petition. The Planning Commission recommended approval of a CB zoning designation for the parcel. This now goes to the City Council for final approval.
McDonald’s at 945 East 2100 South is still working with the city, and we are not aware of the details of the plans.
—-
The Parley’s Open Space and Trails (POST) Meeting Report was read by Judi Short
September 17, 2012
SL County Parks and Trails Bond will be on the November 6th ballot. Because no funding was provided to educate the public about the bond, private individuals and parks and trails advocates are paying for a campaign to educate voters. Go towww.slco.org/parkbond/ to learn more.
Streetcar Update Construction of Phase 1 is on schedule. RDA has hired the consulting firm Infinite Scale to work on signage and branding for the Greenway. Phase 2 of the streetcar extension is still be considered by the City Council. Go towww.shstreetcar.com to sign up for weekly updates regarding the streetcar.
Fairmont Park Update Justin Pollard from SLC Engineering states that the work on irrigation system and the improvements to the duck pond will be completed by mid- November. After we expressed concern earlier this summer that some of the trees were dying from lack of water, crews began hand-watering them and they appear to be recovering.
SLC Parks Open House and Public Lands Symposium was held on Saturday Sept 22nd. Visitors were given information regarding current park projects and were given the opportunity to provide input on the various projects.
Other business POST committee members discussed the issue of off-leash dog parks and the increased demand for more facilities. We will continue to monitor SLC’s proposal to increase the number of acres available for such uses.
Next POST meeting is scheduled for Monday, October 15th.
Tranportation Report -Larry is not here for Transportation. Rawlins spoke about regional parks and trails. It appears that Open Space, Land Use, and Transpotation are all in favor of the bond.
Laurie Bray talked about the Sugar House Art Walk October 12. Amy said the Fairmont award commented on all the wonderful activities that are going on, and that is a huge part of what makes our community so fun to live in.
Bill Knowles – Ombudsman for streetcar, and mitigating impacts of construction. Working on SH Streetcar project as the ombudsman for business and residential properties along the line. He has spent a number of years, starting with the University TRAX line, City Creek, North Temple TRAX, and all in an effort to reduce the effect of construction on the area. There is always pain with a project like this. Wee have found with increased communication and linking people on the ground to people and project owners eliminates 90% of the problems. Other 10% is based on how well we react to things we don’t anticipate. How fast the contractor will correct the problem, helps us succeed. Streetcar project is unique, but we still have some street crossings that will cause aggravation if we don’t foresee problems ahead of time. Judi Short, Helen Peters, and Lynne Olson all have been coming to the streetcar project meetings, sort of like Sugar House rising!! This is what is going on here, like City Creek, all the projects seem to be melding into each other, heavy traffic and population, how do we reduce the impacts, how can we make this work. A week from Friday 8 pm 700 East will be closed in both directions for 48 hours until Monday at 5 a.m., instead of having one lane closed at a time and making traffic a snarl for a month. Business access will be continued, and detour signs will be posted. 9th east will be done first week in November. The streetcar is moving way ahead of schedule, completed mid to late summer of 2013. August 2013 will begin testing the streetcar for a few months and then the streetcar line will open about the time Santa comes to Sugar House. Most of the other projects that are coming along are as a result of the streetcar. Someone asked when the pedestrian access along Highland Drive will be open? All the departments of the city have never sat in the same room at the same time before last week. Rawlins asked about connectivity and a covered house at 900 east to facilitate a transfer to the bus line.
Maryann Pickering of Salt Lake City Planning – Talked about the rezone of the commercial along the Sugar House Streetcar line. The city is creating a form- based code, which looks at the built environment, not specific uses for specific zones. There will be mixed uses within the corner, along the streetcar route at 7th, 5th and Sugarmont. This is a different type of zoning. It is unique because corridor is the back yard of the properties. We will get it next week, will email to Christopher and he can send it out. Right now going to have an item on the monthly open house October 18 at 430 p.m. everyone near the rezone will get a direct notice. Christopher will put this on agenda for next month, and Maryann will be back to get any questions answered.
Ed Butterfield – Redesign of Monument Plaza. One of the RDA project goals is to redesign the Monument Plaza October 23 430-630 p.m. in this room there will be an Open House. We want to hear your vision of what you want to see on the plaza, how do you see us using the plaza in the future. This idea initially started in early 2000s and now we are finally getting around to actually doing it. Come to the Open House.
Robin Hutcheson Director of Transportation for SLC – Many of you have been involved in the various studies and plans for housing, and streets. I am going to talk about the Circulation Plan, which is a multimodal plan. We have a draft circulation plan, the RDA board has seen it and in preparation for the discussion it is on line, and will be on Open City Hall very soon, taking some comments that way. Flushes out some key questions, what should we do with the monument plaza? What about Sugarmont and Wilmington – should we look at Highland to make it a more complete street while maintaining traffic flow, what do we do with our large blocks? Can we look at bike lanes on 21st south? Parleys trail isn’t well connected from where it now stops to where it connects to the streetcar. The plan goes into a series of short, mid and long term objectives, recommendations for creating smaller blocks , recommendation for the Parleys Trail, a set of recommendations, analysis of bike lanes on 21st south. On Highland Drive, traffic is not different when you add a bike line. If we create a center turn lane on Highland, there will be more room for other bicycles and pedestrians. There are recommendations where we can help pedestrians do mid block crossings. Maybe we should close the right hand turn lane at the monument plaza, is the delay to turn worth the trade off for the additional public space?
Amy asked how we could promote better flow of traffic between 1100 and 900 east along 2100 south? What about installing numerous pedestrian flashers, maybe one on 10th east? Robin said we know 21st South is not going to be widened, it carries a lot of traffic, this is a destination, people shouldn’t drive fast, we need to bring that awareness to drivers.. Kudos to Amy for getting the request in and the RDA will fund a Hawk light on 12th east. Rawlins said he wants a “downtown in motion” part of the plan. This repeats the policies that are already in our master plan and tells how you can implement those policies. Michael G Kavanaugh asked how to get the Red Rocky flags. Transportation division will deliver them, if you call and make a request.
Annalisa Steggell gave the SH Merchants Report- Bill Knowles, and Mark Isaacs talked about the Granite Block, the sputnik sign will be restored to its former glory. Merchants are trying to get ourselves ready for the Sugar House rising. We want to be inclusive, we want all businesses to be part of our organization. Might be changing to a chamber, and said there would be a lot of activities at the Fairmont Pool for Halloween.
Master Plan Amendment Korean Church. Mary Ann Pickering of Salt Lake City Planning described this petition. Soren Simonsen as the City Council representative for this neighborhood brought it to the city. The address is 2018 East 2100 South. The current master plan designation is institutional; someone could potentially buy the parcel, and then assemble property nearby and build a much larger institutional building. The request is to rezone it to very low residential. The church is supportive. The property to the east is special development plan residential. This was originally proposed by a member of the SHCC (Rex Sears) a few years back. It is the only church property in SHMP shown as institutional, except for very large church properties. Institutional has to be a minimum of two acres and this lot size does not meet that criteria. If someone were to purchase this is the future there might be an interest in acquiring additional property to make it meet the qualification and to make it consistent with the land use map. Rex Sears spoke and said the concern about this property being institutional is not a dream, someone did want to buy it years ago and buy additional property nearby to make it a larger institutional use. Judi made a notion to pass a positive recommendation to the city. The motion was seconded by Amy, and passed unanimously.
Brad Stewart – Street lighting. He was here to tell us is what is being discussed and what is being presented in front of the city council, so we can make comments as they deliberate. City’s street light program has not been doing well with the city budget and Mayor asked if we could take a look at a more sustainable funding source. They proposed to go to a user fee funded enterprise fund. This is a separate funding source dedicated to street lighting. One residential unit is 75 feet. The city has special assessment areas. This will not interfere with the special residential lights in some areas, which are quite dense and decorative. Those would stay exactly the same. Everyone will pay a base fee, including those that do not now pay. There are about 3000 special lights in Sugar House, and the committee recommended leaving those alone. 801.535.6630 is the number for the Transportation Division to get city lights fixed. On the back of brochure there is a chart that shows the amount budgeted over ten years to catch up with deferred maintenance.
Benny said there is no light on his entire street. Brad said if your neighborhood doesn’t meet that base standard the transportation department could look at it and put you on a list to get a light sooner.
Ken Larsen, candidate for Governor, spoke for five minutes. Gary Herbert’s office said they got the invitation, and we did hear from Peter Cooke a few months back.
Meeting adjourned.
