At last Tuesday's council meeting, this little item was on the agenda:
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R. RICHARD WAGNER, 739 Jenifer St., 53703-3530
(6th A.D.) - appoint to one year of the three-year
term to the position of Citizen Member. Mr.
Wagner is retired from the State of Wisconsin. He
has served
on many city committees and commissions and is
former chair of the Plan Commission. He succeeds
Michael Barrett whose term expired.
TERM EXPIRES: 9-18-2008.
Currently serving on: Transport 2020 Implementation Task Force
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Here's why I'm getting thrown off of the Urban
Design Commission. During my tenure
(2003-present) on the UDC I endeavored toward
these goals:
Neighborhood preservation
-Harmonized UDC decisions with existing
neighborhood plans. This was generally not
happening before. Given that I had served on our
neighborhood's plan committee a few years back, I
was determined that all that hard work be
respected and at least made a part of the
process--for all neighborhoods.
-Fought tirelessly to preserve the scale of
historic neighborhoods. Of note, there has been a
developer push to tear down the beautiful old
homes of Miffland (400 block environs of W.
Mifflin) and other historic neighborhoods in
order to shoe-horn in over-sized apartment
buildings. I was successful in building support
to put a stop to two key developments in these
Isthmus neighborhoods. I believe this sent a
strong message that our neighborhoods are not to
be bulldozed indiscriminately.
Taming Big Box Sprawl
I don't like big boxes, but if we are going to
have them, I want to see them brought more in
line with urban development patterns. Here's what
I worked toward:
-Building orientation to the street
-multiple stories
-mixed use
-less paving
The Hilldale Whole Foods site is a major case in
point. It was originally slated to be a
medium-box store surrounded by several acres of
*surface* parking stretching along a block & a
half of University Avenue--sprawl in the middle
of the city, basically. I helped lead the fight
against such simplistic use of this prime site.
Indeed, after being panned by the UDC, the
original (sprawl) plan--favored by the
mayor--went down in flames. The developer was
forced to come back with an urban solution. Now
it is planned to be a bustling mixed-use
destination, complete with offices, retail,
probably a gym and hundreds of units of
residential. Parking will be shared across uses,
and transit infrastructure is already in place.
Tens of millions of dollars will be added to the
tax base through these efforts.
Taming Parking Lot Sprawl and Reducing Impervious
Surfaces to Save our Lakes & Creeks
When I first came on board, developers were quite
proud of how much parking & paving they were
'providing.' It took a year or so of some often
tense back & forth, but developers eventually
began showing up bragging about how they had
figured out ways to reduce parking & paving.
Message received, I guess. Better yet, the extra
space provided by these efficiencies allowed for
a lot of really cool design elements to be
established, including better landscaping,
tasteful ADA access, and pedestrian & bicycle
amenities.
Here's the context: Go for a test flight with
Google Earth's aerial photos or DCI Map
(http://dcimap.co.dane.wi.us/dcimap/index.htm)
and check out all of the areas of Madison built
after 1960. You'll find that in general, in any
one square block area, fewer than 1/3 of the
parking stalls are in use at any given time. At
the maximum, no lot is more than 2/3 full at any
given time, and they are likely next to mostly
empty lots. (Any full lots are probably car sales
lots, btw.) On-street parking (on these already
over-wide streets) goes largely unused. With this
in mind, I pushed hard to reduce the parking on
most sites that came before us. The net result:
-Fewer parking stalls on a per square foot basis
(for commercial) from an average of over 4 per
1000 s.f. down to about 3 per 1000
s.f.--sometimes even less.
-Fewer parking stalls on a per unit basis from
~2.5/unit down to ~1.75/unit--often much less.
-More shared use of parking between adjacent
sites: For example, a bar next to a law office;
neither should need maximum parking given that
their respective peak use times will be
completely different. Time sharing works wonders
in such situations.
(These numbers are for new developments, not
re-developments in older areas; the numbers would
be significantly lower there, of course.)
Paving goes beyond just a site by site parking
lot analysis. Emergency access, deliveries, ADA
accessiblity, pedestrians, bicycles, etc. also
figure into the picture. Significantly reducing
paving is all about achieving synergies--trying
to find ways to make a given paved area to do
double, triple, even quadruple duty.
For example, I worked with developers and the
fire department to reduce the draconian
over-prescription of fire lanes that resulted in
buildings being completely surrounded by
pavement. True, it often got contentious,
because, well, I was suggesting something that
'isn't the way it has always been done.' But by
pushing the issue, we established that in most
cases, fire code requires only one side of a
building to be paved for safe fire access. We
further reduced required paving by discovering
innovative ways to double up the use of the fire
lane for other uses (such as drive aisles).
The net result of these efforts, by my
estimation: Approximately 1 acre of land saved
from paving every two weeks. Yes, we can still do
better. But the mindset has at least changed from
maximizing parking to creatively reducing it.
Pedestrian/Bicycle/ADA-friendly Site Design
Pedestrian, bicycle & ADA access has always been
part of the UDC charge. But from my observations,
it was something of an afterthought, kind of
shoe-horned in if there was enough room after
monster-wide drive aisles, 360 degree fire lanes
and excess parking were installed. With the new
emphasis on limited paving, there was room for
quality design for safe, convenient and
aesthetically pleasing pedestrian, bicyclist &
ADA amenities, including:
-Logical connectivity within *as well as* between adjacent sites
-Bike parking of a quality design and constantly
pushed for covered bike parking (I was not always
successful on the latter point, but it did happen
often enough to indicate a sea-change in the
thinking of the developers)
-Plenty of space for the landscape architects to
practice their craft for a shady, aesthetically
pleasing environment that invites walking &
bicycling.
Bio-Infiltration
Two years before WisDNR put NR 51 into effect to
deal with on-site stormwater management, I pushed
for bio-infiltration techniques. The first year
was difficult, as the developers pushed back
hard. 'Sheet & pipe'--straight to our lakes--was
the way it had always been done. But by the
second year a landscape architect newly
appointed to the commission took the lead on the
topic and really gave it the boost it needed. NR
51 is a pretty flabby regulation in that it
really doesn't deal with the aesthetics of
on-site stormwater infiltration, nor does it deal
with the uniqueness of sites (topography, for
example). An ugly mudflat at the bottom of a hill
is all that is required by the reg. So even after
NR 51 was implemented we worked to ensure that
bio-infiltration methods were replete with native
plantings and designed to mimic nature in
dispersing the infiltration across the site
(including uplands) rather than at some overly
engineered mudflat--a stagnant biological desert.
Quality Lighting
When I first came on the commission, the goal of
developers was to provide maximal lighting. This
usually meant very tall poles and rod &
cone-searing brightness. Now most developments
come to us with more tasteful, lower intensity,
lower height, more numerous poles fitted with
full cut-off fixtures. Though the overall
lighting levels are lower, the visibility is
better because the light levels are more even
across the site. One's eyes can now more
naturally adjust.
Putting an End to the Worst of the Worst
When I came on board the UDC it had been years
since a project had been outright rejected. This
meant that certain developers knew that they
could keep low-balling the quality of their
projects and still get them through, if they were
patient enough. Within the first year of my
appointment we had rejected four (or so)
projects. This is still a relatively low number
when you consider that we review hundreds per
year. But it at least put the worst of the worst
on notice.
1 X 11 *Can* Make a Difference!
The areas above described above were the central
elements of my, ahem, 'agenda' and I definitely
pushed hard for its implementation. However, none
of it would have been successful without mutually
supportive leadership from other commission
members. I largely supported the design critique
offered by the architects and landscape
architects on the commission; they by & large
supported the above listed priorities put forth
by me, a mere "citizen" commission member. It was
a unique commission in that everyone--while
highly educated to a man or woman--was in
learning mode. Open-minded to a fault.
Factionalism was almost non-existent. Not that
the commission routinely votes in unison; far
from it. But there is always a palpable sense
that everyone is voting for what they see as
objectively the best for the city, political
expediency be damned.
I have to hand it to these dedicated
professionals because the developers being
critiqued at the UDC are all potential future
clients. Yet they pushed the envelope
nonetheless. The city owes them a lot for their
steadfast efforts. I can only hope the energy
levels stay high and the backbones well-calcified.
Abandoning Principles and People for Catty Politics
So in addition to helping build a vigorous,
pro-urban coalition on the Urban Design
Commission--or what the mayor publicly denounced
as "mission creep"--my fate was sealed with my
strong support for the bus system and leading a
campaign to keep a steadfast transit advocate on
the the Transit & Parking Commission. Two years
ago I realized that the mayor simply would not
listen to his supporters (I had quietly written
several low-key, but well-researched memoranda to
him, pointing up the importance of the bus system
and land use issues in the prior two years). Thus
I ended up publicly speaking out against his
annual efforts to slash the bus system. (More
cuts to come this budget season, no doubt.)
Good land use & good transit. That's what I
thought the mayor's 2003 campaign was about. I
thought. Anyway, now you know why the mayor wants
to replace me with a 2003 Soglin supporter. Yeah,
a Soglin supporter! How's that for
über-symbolism?!
The council will vote on this in two weeks. But
these types of votes are usually pro-forma, put
on a consent agenda of dozens of other things and
rubber stamped.
-Mike Barrett
P.s. Apparently I'm in good company: Two
thoughtful commissioners on the Parks Commission
were also just canned for not toeing the line.
One was a conservative, one was a progressive.
Yet another was barred from serving on a Parks
Commission subcommittee for the same reason.
Their crime? Voting against the sale of prime
parkland upon which the Lincoln School Condos sit
in James Madison Park. The money from the sale of
this forever & ever capital asset is slated to go
to a computer program which will be obsolete in a
few months. Burning capital for operating
expenses is one of those things MBA schools teach
you *not* to do. (There will be more dramatic
news on this story to come, so stay tuned!)
Ahhhh, yes, there's nothing like a good old fashioned purge!
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