[A] group of South End artists has asked Burlington city planning leaders to create a steering committee for the development of their neighborhood.
The artists say the city hasn’t created a meaningful process for public participation in planBTV South End, a portion of the city’s master plan that went public in June.
The plan includes housing developments in the neighborhood. Currently the so-called Enterprise District is zoned only for industrial and business uses.
Many artists lease studio workspaces there, and they are concerned that rents will go up as a result of the new developments.
Charles Norris-Brown, a writer and artist who works in the area, said there is a need for a designated group to work with the city. Norris-Brown is a member of the South End Alliance, which has coalesced in response to city plans for the industrial zone.
“We have what I see now as this unbelievable chance to take this raw material – the Enterprise District – and make it something really powerful,” he said at an executive meeting of the Planning Commission last month. “I’m suggesting putting together some kind of brain-trust consortium of people thinking along these terms, where it’s going, a vision, because the future of the Enterprise District is also the future of Burlington.”
But city officials said the planning and zoning efforts, especially on planBTV South End, is already well under way.
David White, the director of City Planning, says members of the Burlington Planning Commission are “disinclined to start the process over and create a new steering committee as suggested.”
“They are only just now getting the opportunity to dig into the detail of the draft plan and put their own stamp on it,” White said.
Though he didn’t rule out a future working group being formed once the planBTV South End is completed, he said the planning commission — not a new committee — would work on modifying the designs.
Future public input
White said businesses “small and large” had been engaged in the planning process and the city will solicit more input in the near future.
“There are lots of other people who have lots of other opinions,” White said. Where the plan goes “in the next generation, and really, the first generation of a specific plan for this part of the city” he said is still up to planners and the public.
The planBTV South End is currently closed for public comment, but the next draft will include public input on the version that came out in June.
Once the plan is completed, city planners will focus on how to implement the recommendations. “That’s really where the rubber meets the road,” White said. “This is an idea that I think you will see more detail about in a future draft.”
Genese Grill, an artist in the neighborhood, said it came as a surprise to her that the Planning Commission, a body made up of elected representatives from different wards across the city, hadn’t yet fully looked at the planBTV proposal.
“It came as a shock to us … to find out that the commission didn’t have any agency or any role in it,” said Grill.
A steering group could ensure that public comments are integrated into plans for new developments and that stakeholders are consulted for input, she said. Schools in the South End hadn’t been consulted, for example, and classroom space is already at a premium.
At the planning meeting, Grill took White to task for not wanting to hear from members of the public.
“You said last time, if you don’t weigh in that’s your fault, but that’s actually a big danger for the whole city and we think the planners would want to think about the consequences of what they’re doing,” said Grill. “If the school board doesn’t weigh in, if the manufacturers don’t weigh in, if the elderly don’t weigh in, then that’s their fault?” she said.
Mayor’s commentary
Emily Lee, a planning commission member, said she was upset by a commentary written by Mayor Miro Weinberger in the Burlington Free Press in which he said he opposed housing in the industrial zone. While a lot of people were “very happy” to read the mayor’s op-ed, Lee wasn’t one of them. She said the mayor downplayed the commission’s role.
“It’s my understanding that the planning and zoning office is the one office that functions independently of the mayor … and it was set up that way intentionally,” she said. “I found it quite infuriating because I think that it actually trumps this entire process … Why are we doing this? If the mayor is able to write a letter saying we do support something, or we don’t support something, then this is all a joke.”
Lee said the mayor’s opinion piece doesn’t preclude housing development in the South End. The commission is part of an independent process, she said, that has an obligation to ensure a good outcome. “The mayor doesn’t have much to do with this at all,” she told the executive committee.
Neighborhood Planning Assembly role
This isn’t the first time a group has wanted the city to take a concerted look at the Enterprise District. In 2000, a group of Ward 5 residents who participated in their Neighborhood Planning Assembly, developed a multi-pronged plan for the industrial zone in hopes of attracting new and more diverse businesses to the area.
Elisa Nelson, who lives on Austin Drive and has been on the Ward 5 Neighborhood Planning Assembly’s steering committee for 11 years, said the last plan for the industrial area helped to create the dynamic South End neighborhood that so many residents, and artists, now enjoy.
Neighborhood Planning Assemblies are formal bodies made up of area residents and businesses that meet on a monthly basis to discuss, learn about, and sometimes build legislation around development issues in their part of the city. City planners attended at least three of the NPA meetings over the course of planBTV South End’s draft stages.
In the first version of the industrial area planning, Nelson said, the group started from scratch and began rethinking zoning for the neighborhood.
“It used to be like, a junk yard isn’t allowed, but a bicycle repair space isn’t allowed, either. Somebody teaching someone to make furniture was not allowed,” Nelson said. “We looked at a lot of those uses and weighed in at the NPA level, and came up with some recommendations and wrote a vision statement, and presented some of our ideas.”
They handed a final report to the city during a revisions process in 2000 of the master plan for the city, she said.
“They incorporated some of that. And that’s why we have some of the places we have, like Zero Gravity and Queen City Brewing, and the South End Kitchen now,” Nelson said.
She said that planBTV South End promoted public meetings and embarked on an aggressive outreach campaign.
“I know that the South End Alliance doesn’t feel like it’s enough but there’s only so much you can do,” she said. “You never can reach everybody, and you will never get to a point where everybody feels satisfied that they’ve had enough input, and you have to get to a point where you say enough is enough.”
For residents and local workers who do want more input, she said, the NPA is a body with real power and clout to change city laws.
“I guarantee not enough people understand what goes on at the NPA,” said Nelson. “That’s probably our hardest thing. Our name alone is difficult … but we call it Burlington’s town meetings. Even all the steering committees (across the NPAs) don’t understand what tools they’re allowed to have.”
NPAs have the ability to craft a participatory planning process, like her group did for the industrial zone in 2000, and the authority to build a referendum question supported by local councilors to bring to City Council.
When asked if she thought housing was a workable idea for the industrial zone in the South End, she said it was her understanding it was off the table, based on the mayor’s letter.
“It’s such a small piece of the potential housing issue in the city, it just isn’t worth it taking up so much of the conversation,” Nelson said.
