Daily Archives: October 17, 2006

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

City Council to get form-based code presentation tonight

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If you missed last night’s meeting at the Gateway building (you can read about that meeting in the Journal Star today) and you want to know more about the proposed form-based codes for the Heart of Peoria, watch the City Council meeting tonight at 6:15 on Insight cable channel 22 (or head downtown to see it live on the fourth floor of City Hall). Ferrell-Madden and Associates will be presenting the new “Land Development Code,” as it’s called now, to the council early in the evening’s proceedings.

The whole idea of this new code is to recognize that zoning needs in the older, urban part of town are different than zoning needs in the suburban part of town. Right now, we just have one zoning ordinance that applies to the whole city, and it’s based on suburban standards (e.g., strictly separating residential and commercial uses of land, extensive parking requirements, fast arterial streets, large setbacks for buildings, etc.).

That kind of zoning just doesn’t work for the older part of town where density is so high that they often can’t meet the extensive parking requirements without tearing down buildings to put in parking decks or large surface lots, where buildings and neighborhoods were designed for mixed uses of land (corner grocery stores, residential apartments above commercial shops, etc.), and where businesses are supposed to front the street, coming right up to the sidewalk.

In addition to these general provisions for maintaining the character of older neighborhoods and commercial districts, the Land Development Code also includes additional, highly-detailed provisions for four specific “form districts”: the Sheridan-Loucks Triangle, the Prospect Road Corridor, the West Main Street Corridor (Renaissance Park), and the Warehouse District. These provisions are tailored to these individual areas, taking into account their unique features and needs. The time it takes to develop such a detailed code for these areas makes it impossible to do this for all 8,000 acres of the Heart of Peoria all at once; but more form districts will be added over time.

As mentioned before, this is not coming before the council for adoption tonight. There will be an intense public hearing process over the next month or so, and hopefully the code, with revisions, will come before the council for adoption sometime in December.

Amtrak, City of Peoria

Ardis is in on Amtrak meeting

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Peoria’s Mayor Jim Ardis will be pressing for rail service to come back to Peoria when he meets with Dick Durbin at a meeting in Champaign, the Journal Star reports:

“I would definitely like to get on Sen. Durbin’s radar because he is very supportive of continued funding for Amtrak,” Ardis said. “Even though it hasn’t been here, we’re the largest metropolitan outside the city of Chicago. I think people would use it and it would help for economic development.”

[…]Still, Ardis said he hasn’t taken a serious look at the possibility and plans to discuss it with council to find out if others are on board after the meeting with Durbin.

So, for all of you other rail-enthusiasts who were wondering who to contact to express your interest in passenger train service returning to Peoria, there’s your answer: contact your city council representatives. It sounds like their interest is going to have an effect on how hard Ardis pushes for it.

There are some significant logistical hurdles to overcome. A common misconception people have about railroads is the belief that the tracks are just like interstates or highways — i.e., that any trains can travel on them whenever they want. But the truth is that railroad companies actually own their own rights-of-way, and any other company that wants to use it has to enter into an agreement and pay a fee to the company who owns it.

That’s right, unlike public roads and airports that are subsidized by the taxpayers, railroads are all privately owned and maintained. And Amtrak doesn’t own any track in Illinois. So for Amtrak to come to Peoria, one of the sticking points is determining what tracks it would/could actually run on. Once that’s determined and a deal is worked out with the owner of the tracks, most likely those tracks would have to be upgraded because Amtrak trains generally run at a higher speed (70+ mph) than freight trains. And that costs money; probably state money.

The bottom line is, there would have to be better ridership than there was back in the late 70’s when train service left Peoria, or the early 80’s when Amtrak left East Peoria. And, contrary to some comments I’ve seen, just running a train to Normal to connect with trains there isn’t going to cut it. We need a direct-to-Chicago route (in less time than it takes to drive) if we want to get significant ridership. One of the reasons ridership was down 20-30 years ago was because service got so bad and trains went so slowly due to deferred track maintenance.

I think Peoria would embrace fast, quality passenger train service to Chicago and St. Louis. I’m glad to hear that Ardis, Durbin, and other elected officials are interested.