Category Archives: Heart of Peoria Plan

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan

Journal Star reveals “wonderful development”

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Kudos to the Journal Star for ferreting out information on the “wonderful development” we keep hearing about from the city:

The proposed project would include a new hotel bearing a nationally known flag on the same block with the Hotel Pere Marquette, which would be renovated, sources said.

Sources said the project is spearheaded by local developer Gary Matthews, whose work includes multiple commercial projects in East Peoria, including the Riverside Center and GEM Terrace….

Sources said a feasibility study has been completed for the proposed project and that it was positive. They did not say, however, who did the study.

Matthews and his partners reportedly met with Peoria City Council members two at a time – to avoid having a majority of a quorum and violating the Illinois Open Meetings Act – in recent months to explain the proposal’s basics.

The project, sources said, calls for renovation of the Hotel Pere Marquette, which Matthews and his partners would acquire from current owners Innco Hospitality of Kansas City, Kan., a parking deck, a new pool and spa area.

The two hotels would be connected to the Peoria Civic Center via an elevated skywalk crossing Fulton Street, a document the newspaper obtained shows. Sacred Heart Church would be left untouched.

The hotel construction would require demolition of Big Al’s and adjoining businesses.

A new hotel in Peoria will be good for the economy and certainly good for convention business at the Civic Center. But as with anything, the devil is in the details. Some of those details that concern me are:

  • Design — What will the new hotel look like? Will it conform to the Land Development Code? Take a look at GEM Terrace in East Peoria and tell me there isn’t reason for concern here.
  • Big Al’s — Why the need to bend over backward for this business? In the past when a “wonderful opportunity” came along, the city simply took the property via eminent domain. Think Eagle’s Cleaners, or Midtown Plaza. Here, the city is helping facilitate a move to Hamilton Blvd. apparently in violation of the adult use ordinance, necessitating a change in that ordinance to make it legal. Why not take the property and let Al’s find new digs someplace that conforms to existing ordinances, like any every other business?
  • The skyway — The skyway will take pedestrians off the street. That’s what skyways are designed to do. Unfortunately, this is in direct contradiction to downtown revitalization plans (e.g., the Heart of Peoria Plan) which are designed to put more pedestrians on the street. And then there are the aesthetic issues of putting a skyway across Fulton.
  • The City’s role — What is the city’s role in all of this? What taxpayer funds, if any, will be expended? Surely there will be some — if nothing else, the connection to the Civic Center will require some modification of the Civic Center to receive the skyway traffic. Did the city pay for or help pay for the feasibility study? Since this is part of the City’s Hospitality Improvement Zone (HIZ), what incentives will this project be getting? These are things that should be discussed openly because they are public issues.
City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan, Streets, West Bluff

Van Auken abandons Main Street improvements

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According to our neighborhood newsletter, second-district councilperson Barbara Van Auken is not going to ask for any funding for Main Street improvements in 2009:

The proposed changes to Main Street are estimated to be in the order of $10 million. Barbara Van Auken (our City Council representative) will not support inclusion of changes to Main Street in Peoria’s 2009 budget, citing the need to do further study of the project, as well as more pressing priorities elsewhere in the city for next year’s capital budget.

That’s right. After all the time, money, and effort that has been expended for these improvements over the past six years, now, at the 11th hour, our city councilperson is evidently going to abandon the project.

Let’s review. Main Street is one of four form districts in Peoria (the others being the Warehouse District, Sheridan/Loucks Triangle, and Prospect Road Corridor). A form district is a small part of the Heart of Peoria Plan area that the City singled out for more intensive coding known as a “form-based code.” The idea was to focus resources on these areas, then spread out from there to revitalize the rest of the Heart of Peoria Plan area over time.

Main Street is starting to see some significant private investment. The old Walgreens was recently purchased and a new mixed-use development is underway. The businesses adjacent to the Costume Trunk are replacing their facade. One World recently expanded with the departure of Lagron Miller.

But at least one established business — Running Central — is getting impatient for improvements to be made to Main Street. In the past, the new owner has stated that if changes aren’t made, he’s going to move the business to Junction City.

You can’t blame him. The city seems to be stuck in “analysis paralysis” when it comes to changing the streetscape on Main. Consider the studies: The Heart of Peoria Plan (2002); Wallace Roberts & Todd Med-Tech/Ren Park study (2004); Farrell-Madden form-based code study (2006); Hansen traffic study (2008). All of these studies in one way or another said we need to “fix the streets” — i.e., make them more pedestrian-friendly, slow the traffic down, provide on-street parking for businesses, etc. — and so far, no road improvements have materialized.

Van Auken’s pronouncement that she won’t even try to get funding for this important project in 2009 is disappointing to say the least. After six years and four studies on this project, what’s it going to take to get some follow-through from the city?

In fairness, some progress has been made in other areas: specifically, the form-based code and broader Land Development Code have been enacted. But that’s only half of what’s needed to make these form districts a success. The LDC and form-based codes regulate the private space. But in order for these districts to thrive, there absolutely must be improvement to the public space as well.

Public improvements have been noticeably absent from the form districts so far. Attempts to make Adams and Jefferson street two-way in the Warehouse District has met with opposition from Caterpillar. Efforts to narrow Washington street to make it more pedestrian-friendly has met with opposition from IDOT and first district councilman Clyde Gulley, who is in the trucking business and likes having Washington be a high-speed truck route. The Prospect Road corridor hasn’t even been talked about the last two years.

The most promising area is the Sheridan/Loucks Triangle, where yet another study has recently been done to look at specific ways to improve the streetscape. Whether that effort will get funded remains to be seen. I’m not sure whether Van Auken considers it one of those “more pressing priorities” for the City’s capital budget, or if it will also get the axe.

Finally, let’s quickly talk about Van Auken’s reasons for abandoning the Main Street project.

  • “The proposed changes to Main Street are estimated to be in the order of $10 million.” — Assuming that estimate is correct, yeah, that’s a lot of money. But of course it can and should be phased over several years, not spent all at once. That’s the way it is with all large road projects. Speaking of which, does anyone think that the fifth district councilman will not ask for funding for widening Northmoor Road or extending Pioneer Parkway in 2009 due to “more pressing priorities elsewhere in the city”?

  • “…citing the need to do further study of the project…” — I think we’ve already established that there’s been plenty of study. Anyone wanting more study at this point is simply looking for different conclusions.

  • “…as well as more pressing priorities elsewhere in the city for next year’s capital budget.” — Why is the Main Street project not a “pressing priority”? We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars studying it and countless hours getting public input on it. There’s even a grassroots organization (Campaign for a Walkable West Bluff) that has sprung up to try and push this project along. There’s no governmental or judicial agency standing in the way of it. It’s part of the city’s plan for revitalizing the older parts of town. What are these unspecified “more pressing priorities”? Implementing a new logo? Continuing to subsidize downtown parking?

I would also point out that these improvements to Main Street have quite a bit of popular support in the second district (although there are some who are opposed, of course). Neighborhood organizations, the West Bluff Council, and businesses along Main are pretty enthusiastic about seeing these changes made. I wonder how all those people will feel about Van Auken putting the kibosh on those improvements right before she’s up for reelection.

City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan

Sheridan Triangle final public meeting planned

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From a press release:

The City of Peoria will host the third Public Open House at the Council Chambers, Room 400, City Hall, 419 Fulton Street, Peoria, on Thursday, October 9, 2008 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The purpose of this open house is the discussion of the preferred alternative identified in previous open houses, and the review of the potential streetscape layout components and landscaping options, and to collect final comments on the Master Plan for the Form District known as the Sheridan Triangle Business District, before its presentation to the Peoria City Council.

The intent of the project is to revitalize the character of the streets in the study area to create urban, pedestrian-friendly streets through narrower travel lanes, wider sidewalks and a tree canopy, as well as other improvements to be determined through this public Master Plan process.

City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, Traffic

Sheridan Triangle progress encouraging

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This past Wednesday, July 16, I attended the public meeting/open house on the Sheridan Triangle Roadway Enhancement project. All the project team members were in attendance:

  • Scott Reeise, City of Peoria representative
  • Eric Bachman, Farnsworth Group project manager
  • Keith Covington, Third Coast Design urban designer
  • Lee Jones, Third Coast Design urban designer
  • George Ghareeb, Terra Engineering public coordinator
  • Phil Allyn, Farnsworth Group traffic engineer
  • Bruce Brown, Farnsworth Group landscape/streetscape architect

Second district councilmember Barbara Van Auken was also there to kick things off and introduce everyone. Unfortunately, not a lot of residents or business owners were in attendance — maybe ten at the most. I’m not sure when the immediate neighbors were notified of the meeting, but I heard about it on Wednesday in the early afternoon. If others were notified that late, it’s no wonder it wasn’t better attended.

Nevertheless, the material presented was very encouraging. The plan that’s coming together is almost exactly what the neighbors and business owners who attended the Farrell/Madden charrette in 2006 said they wanted. Here are the materials that were distributed:

Sheridan Triangle Flyer
Sheridan Triangle PowerPoint Slides
Sheridan Triangle Alternatives B and C

In past, non-public meetings, there were other options put forth, including one for a roundabout at the intersection of Loucks, Gift, and Sheridan. Now, everything has been narrowed down to two alternatives, which were presented in detail at the meeting. After the meeting, participants filled out questionnaires asking which alternative they preferred, as well as other questions about what they liked and didn’t like about each alternative.

I tried out the video function of my new digital camera that night and was able to capture five minutes of the presentation. (I decided to do this just on a whim, so I didn’t have a tripod with me. Thus, if you’re prone to seasickness, you may not want to watch this video — not the steadiest shot. I could only get five minutes because I only have a 1GB memory card, and I had other pictures on it already. Also, I added a plugin to my site so that I can play videos directly from the Chronicle without having to go through YouTube!) The speaker is Keith Covington. He’s just finished explaining that the only difference between alternatives B and C is the treatment of the Sheridan/Loucks/Gift intersection:

[flashvideo filename=http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Video/Keith_Covington.flv /]

I prefer alternative C. It will do the best job of calming traffic, and is the least disruptive to existing businesses. It provides a beautiful terminus for Loucks when traveling from either direction. And it’s more pedestrian friendly, since two streets will be at right angles at the intersection, providing shorter crosswalks. From talking to other attendees after the event, it sounds like that’s what they preferred as well.

In all cases, the plans took into account a balanced use of the corridor. Sidewalks are wider. Street trees, pedestrian-scale lighting, and on-street parking provide a buffer between motor vehicle and pedestrian/bicycle traffic. Bus pull-offs and shelters are provided. It’s consistent with the Heart of Peoria Plan and the Form Based Code.

Kudos to the project team and all who have been working to improve this area. Hopefully this project will be fully funded when the budget is set for the next fiscal year.

City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, New Urbanism

The new LDC: Do whatever the heck you want

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I’m not quite sure why we even have a Land Development Code or a Form Based Code. We spent a lot of time meeting with citizens and stakeholders to come up with the vision of what we want to see. We spent a lot of money codifying that vision. But all of that work was for naught if we’re not going to enforce it.

Once again, someone has blatantly violated the Land Development Code (this time in the Sheridan Triangle Form District). And once again, the city has rolled over and played dead.

The new owner of the old Dairy Queen at Sheridan and Loucks put vinyl siding on his building, even though the Form Based Code for that area explicitly disallows vinyl siding. Then, after the fact, he asked for an administrative deviation from the Planning and Growth department. He got it, natch.

Message received by the development community: “Ignore the code. Do whatever the heck you want. Yeah, it would be best if you asked beforehand so we can rubber-stamp your variance in advance. But if that’s too much trouble, hey, just do whatever and ask for forgiveness later. We’re flexible.”

Heart of Peoria Plan, Streets

Roundabout

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A little over a week ago, the Journal Star reported that a roundabout is being considered for the intersection of Sheridan, Loucks, and Gift in the “Sheridan Triangle” form district. This was surprising to me. I have nothing against roundabouts, but they’re not the only option or even the best option for every intersection.

You may remember that there was a public meeting back on March 5 to discuss options for improvement of the public space in this form district. Keith Covington was there along with other engineering and street design experts with experience in creating new urban streetscapes.

Everyone I talked to that night — to a person — said that a roundabout was not the best solution to this particular intersection, although they all affirmed they liked roundabouts. The problems here, it was explained to me, were several.

First of all, there wasn’t enough space. Because it’s an intersection of three streets, there’s a minimum radius that’s required to accommodate all the “legs” that would be coming off the roundabout, and that space simply isn’t available at that intersection, I was told.

Secondly, they were concerned with creating dead space in the middle of the roundabout. Going along with that big required radius would be a lot of space in the middle of which pedestrians would get no practical use.

Thirdly, no roundabout was suggested at the charrette for this area. If you look at the drawings that were produced by the neighbors and business owners during the charrette process, the vision then was to have Loucks intersect with Gift before the intersection with Sheridan on the east side (just like Loucks intersects with Forrest Hill before the University intersection), and have Gift intersect with Loucks before the Sheridan intersection on the west side. This would create a four-way intersection at Sheridan instead of a six-way, and a pocket park could even be put in on the southeast corner, which would be usable by pedestrians.

Suffice it to say, there was a compelling case made that night for no roundabout. But now, suddenly, a roundabout is a serious contender for this intersection. It would be interesting to discover how decisions are being made, but the district councilperson is keeping attendance at these meetings under tight control.

For more information on roundabouts in the United States, see the excellent resources at the Transportation Research Board’s site. Hat tip to Beth Akeson on providing the TRB info.

City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, Zoning Board of Appeals

Exceptions: 3, LDC: 0

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Land Development TrashI guess we may as well just pitch the Land Development Code. It doesn’t appear that city commissions have any interest in actually enforcing it.

The Zoning Board of Appeals met Thursday to consider the case of 819 E. Fairoaks (corner of Fairoaks and Illinois). You may recall that the builder of this house submitted one plan to the city, then built something completely different. Specifically, the attached garage was supposed to be set back 6 feet from longest plane of the street side facade, but instead it was built 12 feet in front of the facade, a difference of 18 feet. This puts it out of compliance with the Land Development Code, and it means the house is not consistent with the other homes in the neighborhood. Nevertheless, on a 4-3 vote, a variance was granted. The City could appeal the decision to circuit court; that possibility is under review according to Planning & Growth staff.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the ZBA meeting on Thursday, but I did listen to a recording of it. The builder (and his representative) employed what I’m going to start calling “the Bradley defense.” He said that it was an “honest mistake.” You see, the original plan he submitted to the city wasn’t compliant, so he made several changes, and the revised plan was approved. But then — whoops! — doggone it if he didn’t accidentally give the original plans to the excavator.

To compound matters, when the city inspector came out for a footings inspection, he signed off on the project. I caught up with City Inspections Manager John Kunski this past Tuesday and asked him how that happened. According to Kunski, the policy is that the builder is supposed to have a copy of the city-approved plan on-site. When the builder is ready for the footings inspection, he calls the city, and a city inspector (who’s usually out in the field) goes directly to the site to inspect it — he doesn’t have time to go back to the office to get copies of the site plan. In this case, the builder did not have the plans on-site, and the inspector didn’t have the site plan either; but in an effort to be customer-friendly, he signed off on it anyway because everything else was in order. Kunski said he’s strictly enforcing the policy now.

After that, I talked to at-large councilman Gary Sandberg, who used to be over the Inspections Department himself before he became a councilman. He said that there’s no need for the inspector to go directly to the site when called. The builder is supposed to give 24-hours notice — plenty of time for the inspector to gather all the site plans of the properties he will be inspecting before heading out to the site.

At the ZBA meeting, however, it was explained that enforcing the site plan was a secondary concern of the building inspections department. The primary concern is that the site is prepared properly so that whatever is built will be safe and stable. Ultimately, however, even the builder acknowledged that, while the city’s miscue compounded the problem, the builder was ultimately responsible for the error in construction.

So, now the house is almost all built. What to do? Of course the builder wants a variance. His basic argument is that this house is better than what was there before, and the neighbors approve of the house as is. The house “improves the character of the neighborhood” and it would be too costly to correct the mistake. He went on and on about how all the neighbors were thanking him for making the neighborhood so much better, and how grateful they were that he got rid of that rundown house that was there. It was “a simple mistake,” he said, adding, “just like Bradley.”

I should mention that the builder is not actually going to live in the house or the neighborhood. He bought the property and built the home just to turn around and sell it again, and hopefully make a little money on the deal. That would explain why he might not have noticed or cared that the contractor was building it wrong.

Judging from the recording, it sounds like the ZBA made its decision in favor of the variance based on the argument that this new house is better than what was there before (reportedly a rundown house everyone was pleased to see razed).

So, I guess that’s the new standard. We didn’t really need to spend all that time and money in charrettes, consultants, experts, etc., writing a complicated, legally-defensible zoning code based on the Heart of Peoria Plan. Really, all we needed was what I like to call the “Unwritten Development Code for Older Neighborhoods”:

Unwritten Development Code for Older Neighborhoods:
(based on decisions by Zoning and ZBA commissions)
Build whatever the heck you want. We’re desperate, and we’re willing to sell out whatever ideals we have if you’ll just build something… anything… please!! We’re begging you!

Last November, the Zoning Commission and the City Council voted to disregard the LDC for some development next to St. Ann’s Church. Now the ZBA has shown they’re willing to toss it aside as well. Bradley’s parking deck issue was a little different (not a design issue like St. Ann’s and the Fairoaks house; it was self-reported and compensated for with an improved pedestrian streetscape). Nevertheless, it was an exception to the LDC, and it’s already being invoked as a precedent to justify non-compliance.

The exception is becoming the rule.

City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan, HOPC

HOPC Update

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I thought you might be interested to know what’s going on with the Heart of Peoria Commission these days. Here’s a quick look:

The Executive Summary

One of the top things on the Heart of Peoria Commission’s work plan this year is to develop an executive summary of the Heart of Peoria Plan. The Plan as it exists now is a large-format (11×17), 78-page color document that is expensive to reproduce (~$150). Even as a commissioner, when I asked for a copy of the document, I was presented with a stapled, single-sided, photocopied, black and white version.

Well, that doesn’t exactly invite people to read the document and catch the vision. So the idea is to create a smaller, shorter, easier-to-reproduce, but still color version of the plan that would give the basic ideas in summary form. This could then be given to anyone who wants or needs to know about the Plan, from citizens to developers to commissioners/council members.

There were two options for getting this done. We could have a staff member do it (Planning and Growth Director Pat Landes offered one of her staff — Kimberly Smith), or we could see if someone from the original team that put the plan together (e.g., David Brain from New College of Florida) would be able to do it for us for a small fee.

We’ve run into roadblocks with both options. The first option (in-house) is stalled because, with the departure of Ed Boik, the Planning and Growth department is short-staffed, and so our staff liaison got pulled off the project. With the latter option, we run into funding issues. The council didn’t give our commission any funding this year, so we would have to try to convince a City department to spend some of their limited funds on this project. We’re still working on that option.

Sheridan Triangle

The Sheridan/Loucks Triangle project is moving along. After the Heart of Peoria Plan was adopted “in principle” by the Council, the next step the Commission did was get it codified for the Plan area. That’s when Farrell Madden came in and wrote the Land Development Code (LDC). The LDC includes four Form Based Code areas: Warehouse District, West Main (Renaissance Park), Prospect Road Corridor, and the Sheridan/Loucks Triangle. After the coding was finished, the Council passed a facade improvement program for the Sheridan/Loucks area (among others), which gave some incentives for the businesses to spruce up their storefronts.

Now in order for the area to really be revitalized, it takes not just private investment, but also public investment. The City needs to improve the streetscape in order for this area to be successful again. Right now the street is too wide, the sidewalks too narrow, and the traffic too fast. By installing wider sidewalks, pedestrian-scale lighting, street trees, and on-street parking, the City will incentivize redevelopment.

Even though this is obviously the culmination of the Heart of Peoria Plan and the LDC that was spearheaded by HOPC, the Commission has not been included in this latest phase yet. We weren’t invited (by accident, we’ve been assured) to the public kick-off meeting at Columbia Middle School. I heard about it, however, and attended anyway. While there, I talked to Gene Hewitt and Nick Stoffer from the City’s Traffic & Engineering department. They mentioned that they thought a Heart of Peoria commissioner should be on the Citizen Advisory Group (CAG).

I told HOPC chairman Bill Washkuhn that I’d be interested in serving on the CAG, and he forwarded my request to Second District Council Member Barbara Van Auken. She responded:

The representatives who are involved at this point are residential and business neighbors. At a later stage, we will seek input from others, including HOPC and Traffic Commissioners. I’ll notify C.J. when we are at a point where his contribution is appropriate.

After a recent Council meeting, I ran into Ms. Van Auken and asked her at what point in the process she would be bringing in the commissions, and she said once the engineers have some feasible options. Evidently she doesn’t want commissioners making suggestions of things that might not be feasible. So, once the engineers have several options from which to choose, she said the HOP and Traffic commissions will be invited to start participating.

Next Meeting

The next Heart of Peoria Commission meeting is scheduled for Friday, April 25, 8:00-10:30 a.m., City Hall, room 404.

City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan

As expected, a variance is requested

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On the agenda for the April 10, 2008, Zoning Board of Appeals meeting is this item:

CASE NO. ZBA 2878

Petitioner Franklin Scudder, on behalf of Richard Hayes, is requesting a 100% variance from the provisions of the Land Development Code for the Heart of Peoria Article 4.1.5.E.2. to eliminate and exceed the attached garage design standard of placement 6 feet behind the longest plane of the street-side façade to 12 feet in front of the longest street-side façade plane. Approval of the request will result in an 18-foot variance. The property is located at 819 E. Fairoaks Avenue, in the R-4 Single-Family Residential Zoning District.

I reported on this earlier this month:

This is a new house being built in an older neighborhood — in fact, it’s within the Heart of Peoria Plan area and falls under the regulations of the Land Development Code. The site plan that was submitted to and approved by the city was in compliance. But the house that’s constructed there — and almost completed — is different than the site plan, and decidedly not in compliance (The attached garage was supposed to be “set back 6? from longest plane of street side facade,” but instead it was built 12? in front of the facade, a difference of 18?). Once it came to the attention of the Planning & Growth Department, a stop work order was issued, and now the contractor will either have to comply with the approved site plan or seek a variance.

He’s seeking a variance, as expected. If he gets it, we’ll have a new way around the Land Development Code — submit a compliant site plan to the city, then build whatever you really want. It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, you see. Since apparently no one with the City checks to see if construction is proceeding as approved, I predict we’ll be seeing a lot of these kinds of projects in the Heart of Peoria Plan area.