Focus Group Open Thread

If you attended today’s Focus Group meeting, please use the comments section on this post to share your thoughts on what happened. If you were unable to attend today’s Focus Group meeting, please use the comments section to share your thoughts on the Draft Design Guidelines Parts One and Two and Street Hierarchy Diagram, Street Types Diagram, the Draft Urban Design Plan, and the Draft Implementing Strategies.

The county Department of Planning and Zoning will be presenting the plan this Monday, February 27th at 7pm at the Spear Center (former Rouse Building) at the Lakefront. My question is: Is the plan ready to be moved forward as seems to be the intentions of the Department of Planning and Zoning? I have yet to see any change to the plan reflecting either public comment during or after the charrette or based on the comments of members of the focus group. I have now attended everyone of the charrette and Focus Group meetings and frankly the plan doesn't reflect what the community said during the charrette and after repeated constructive efforts by members of the focus group to address problems in the plan I have not seen any changes. I wish at this point everything had been fixed and I could go back to my normal busy life, but it hasn't been and I think our best bet left to fix this is to have as big a crowd show up to the February 27th presentation and to show our elected officials through our numbers that we want the plan fixed before it is approved. There seems to be a real potential that there will be push to have the plan approved before key details are known or fixes made. The documents the Department of Planning and Zoning have been presenting to the focus group are replete with reference to important studies being done after approval.