The City Council meets Tuesday evening at 6:15 p.m. in City Hall, room 400. Here are the agenda items that caught my eye this week:
- There are a couple of new businesses seeking to join the Warehouse District TIF. The first is LaVille de Maillet, LLC, which is buying the recently-closed Biggins Label Company building, 820 SW Adams. The development plan is to put shared office space in the front of the building and a residential apartment in the rear. Interesting trivia about the name of the company: “LaVille de Maillet” is what Peoria was called in the late 1700s when French villagers lived here (where downtown is now), led by French-Canadian military commander Jean Baptiste Maillet. The company is owned by Dennis Slape, publisher of the Numero entertainment guide. I’ve heard he’s going to set up a photography studio, and one of the other tenants may be ArtsPartners.
- The second new business in the Warehouse District I’ve mentioned in a previous post. Drumheller Bag Corporation of Clarksdale, Mississippi, is expanding and has decided to add a new plant here in Peoria. In fact, they like it here so well, they’re moving their headquarters here, too. They’ve already hired 57 employees, 50 of which are former Bemis workers.
- Does a development on Radnor Road really need to be part of the city’s enterprise zone? Would you consider Willow Knolls and Radnor Road to be a “depressed area,” qualifying for enterprise zone status? City staff and the Planning Commission think so. You really should click on that link and read the council communication — you won’t believe it. Double A’s Pizza just got a loan from the city’s Business Development Loan Fund in August of this year, and now they’re planning to move to this new development at Willow Knolls and Radnor, just outside the city limits. The city doesn’t want to lose the sales tax revenue (how much pizza do people eat out there?), so they’re offering this Enterprise Zone status to try to lure the development into annexing. Huh? I can only assume that it meets the letter of the law, but surely this use of the Enterprise Zone violates the spirit of the law. And do we really need more land annexed when we can’t adequately provide city services to the land we already have?
- As previously reported, the neighbors in Vinton Highlands don’t want a gate between their subdivision and the new, upscale Coves subdivision. So the Traffic Commission is recommending that the city deny the Coves developer’s request to install a gate separating the two neighborhoods. That’s the right decision; hopefully the council will concur.
- Finally, there’s an agenda item regarding changes to the Land Development Code. City staff has been reviewing the code to see how it works or doesn’t work, and they have made some recommendations for change. Most of them are reasonable, but the Heart of Peoria Commission had some concerns with a few of them. We expressed those concerns at our last meeting and the public hearing held by the Zoning Commission. Staff apparently doesn’t agree, as they are still asking for approval of their changes as proposed, without making any changes based on HOPC’s recommendations. The result is a council communication that asks for council to choose to adopt either Option A, staff’s recommendation, or Option B, which is staff’s recommendation with HOPC’s changes. Considering the council did not give HOPC any funding this year, it will be interesting to see if they consider our concerns.
Except that the gate has already been installed — when you read the minutes …. hum wonder how that happened 0000ps!
Karrie — I guess that’s the developer’s loss. If the city denies the request, I imagine he will have to remove it, or at least leave it permanently open.
Why would staff recommend that? That entire area of Pioneer Park is becoming more and more vacant. Give them an incentive to stay at the existing location.
CJ: Would this be considered more Peoria Developer Welfare?
Karrie — It sure looks like it to me.
Or, maybe Nichting, instead of tearing up the tracks, decided to put the gate up prematurely.
actually the enterprise zone isn’t new on this agenda. A while back an obscure council agenda item was to vote to expand the enterprise zone in case the area at Wilhelm and Radnor was annexed. I thought this an odd item so I asked a few councilmen about the item. One thought there was going to be a shopping center there and that it would be an extension of an earlier enterprise zone used on/near Pioneer parkway. One had no idea (and it’s a councilman who normally does). One said to spur development. (I noted that it’s not even annexed land and certainly development doesn’t need to encouraged there, like it does in inner city) aka, “I never met a developer I didn’t like.” One promised to check into it and never reported back.
fast forward to a few council meetings later…low and behold there is an annexation item on the agenda. step two. Still no one has put the two items together, (at least publically). and now the current item.
This process has gotten me curious since bothering to look at budget items and following the trails of dollars in a variety of locations….elections are interesting animals………
I have begun wondering how many other projects were done piecemeal which didn’t garner anyone’s attention and then wham…we have a new strip mall funded by taxes one way or another….
start paying attention to these items.
Gee, Paul, I thought you said calling politicians directly always worked for you? 😉
I didn’t call anyone did this in person
Land Development Code.
Interesting to see how many people said or know anything about this.
I went to the last council meeting that the were to vote on this and it was deffered. I decided not to attend this meeting since I did not want to waste my time again.
Marty:
recap:
funding for idea for neighborhood stabilization Shot down. Welfare to developers upheld in two occasions, plus mentioned were concerns about fees to businesses about hazardous waste fees. Quite frankly I blame us. Only one person spoke up at budget time/public hearing and only two spoke about a potential tax hike. Then there is a lot of griping after it’s too late. When candidates speak about a passion for older neighborhoods and only use their voice for businesses and developers and we don’t call them on the carpet and then the sins of all sins comes when they are up for re-election and we don’t hold them accountable…..ugggghhhh it’s frustrating.
LDC seems to have as much red tape as the other code. They have many kinks to work out. Glad some are asking questions.
The porch question is an issue. We have an enclosed porch. If we were to ever add on to the house and we had to open it up, we wouldn’t be able to do an expansion. There are a lot of enclosed porches on this block. What I did find humorous is the fight to open up enclosed porches to bring people out. Apparantly to watch people tripping on the crappy sidewalks that won’t get funded. But hey can’t dip into that developer pot. Wouldn’t want one of them to not get that second home in the country.
LDC
From the discussion on the council floor , Heck lets let everyone do anything in the form district acording to some on the council. Close porches, open porches, have a 30 to 100 ft driveway opening as I see it if it is in your neighborhood you can mach it so let’s provide more slum like settings, boards on windows fire gutted homes, cars everywhere in yards. Yes the LDC is not going to cover everything but it is a start. What incentaves are in place now? The core of the city is ripe for non investment rental property (buy property and not invest in major improvements). The LDC attemps to break that cycle. Bring home ownership back to the core, spur investment. granted the lack of investment in infastructure on the city’s part is not good, but if investment comes the COP might invest in sidewalks & ect. As to your porch, it was in the code before so you would have to open it up, unless you got a permit in the past and it was approved for the porch. so what is the big change?