March 23, 2006
FROM: James W. Grauerholz.
TO: Lawrence City Commission
RE: Rezoning of 800 Lynn St. block (Salvation Army site), as recommended by the final draft of the Burroughs Creek Corridor Plan.
Background and context:
Lawrence Salvation Army and their local Advisory Board have pursued a relocation and expansion of their community services since the late 1990s. In 1999 an investor in the Downtown 2000 project offered them a four-acre vacant block near Haskell & East 19th St., and in 2003 they committed to it.
Because that block was still zoned Industrial, Salvation Army were exempt from any “Use Permitted Upon Review” evaluation of the appropriateness of the location, or any possible protest petition by adjacent landowners.
Salvation Army’s Site Plan for a Community Complex was approved by You in May 2004, and was renewed by You for one year (only) in May 2005. That unrenewable Site Plan approval expires on May 25, 2006.
The City Commission heard many public comments at the hearings in 2004 and 2005, most of them opposed to this location—but because of zoning, You could legally consider only the specific site-planning guidelines.
The
Burroughs Creek Corridor Plan commenced in late 2004, as you know.
A dozen citizen volunteers—representing three Eastside neighborhoods, the Planning Commission, the Lawrence Assoc. of Neighborhoods, the Parks & Rec. Advisory Board, industrial interests in the Corridor, and the Bicycle Advisory Committee—convened biweekly, for a full year, to discuss and develop the Burroughs Creek Corridor Plan, with assistance from the Neighborhood Planner and the Director of Parks Maintenance.
As a member of the Burroughs Creek Corridor Plan Study Committee, I can tell you that our committee took no position, for or against, Salvation Army’s plans.
We merely urged that this large Industrial-zoned lot, along with four others, be initiated for rezoning, with another thirteen “M”-zoned parcels in the “second tier” also recommended for eventual downzoning.
We recommended this to ensure that, if Salvation Army somehow failed to complete their building plans, then this four-acre vacant block should not be “industrially” developable by them, or by some subsequent owner.
The old Eastside (north of K-10) is an area of Lawrence that has been striving mightily in the last few years years to “de-industrialize”; to add affordable and mid-price, owner-occupied family housing to the existing oversupply of “affordable” (often substandard) housing; and to create a beautiful linear park and recreational corridor, with major historic attractions, along the former BNSF railroad line.
Since the railroad ceased rail service in 2001, many millions of private and public dollars have poured (and, we hope, will continue to pour) into this corridor: two major planned residential developments; two major industrial redevelopments; major City stormwater and wastewater projects; parks improvements at three locations; and two major new historic-sites projects.
The recommended rezoning, to “O-1,” does not block Salvation Army’s current plans. (Neither does “RO-1 / RO-1A,” i.e. RMO, as they propose.)
But it does admittedly expose Salvation Army to the “Use Permitted Upon Review” requirements, if their new Site Plan submission occurs after such rezoning is initiated—or to the “Special Use Permit” requirements, if submission occurs after the Effective Date of the new Land Development Code. That Date is anticipated by Staff to be June 1, 2006.
As a member of the Brook Creek Neighborhood Association, I can tell you that we—and the Old East Lawrence NA, and the Barker NA—are firmly and unalterably opposed to the offering of any “relief-based” services at this site … such as “soup kitchen,” or “transient shelter.”
Granted, Salvation Army’s Site Plan, and their public comments in the media and at meetings with neighborhood people, have emphasized the “residential-rehabilitation” aspects of their proposed Uses of this site.
Well, I assure you, there is no appreciable opposition from the three Eastside Neighborhoods to the Rehabilitative-Residential Uses that have been described.
But the Neighborhoods have never received any binding assurance that neither “soup kitchen” nor “transient shelter” relief-based services will ever be offered at this site—right in the middle of our residential neighboods.
In fact, there has been a string of discouraging, equivocal, or noncommittal statements by Salvation Army folks, to You and to us, the last three years.
And there is nothing in the Notes on the face of this Site Plan to specify that Salvation Army will not offer relief-based services here.
I would also point out that the Final Report of the Task Force on Homeless Services (June 2005) called this Issue #1:
“Lawrence has no community-wide coherent philosophy for the delivery of services to the homeless [because] 'relief / maintenance' programs exist concurrently with 'rehabilitative' programs."
(And we note that the $ 3.5 million Salvation Army is trying to raise for their independent facility and programs is nearly equal to the $ 4.5 million suggested by the Task Force as the cost of a single all-City facility.)
It is very hard for us to forget that no one was ever allowed any legal input on the question of how appropriate this location is for “relief” Uses.
We also think it is madness to allow relocation of any of Salvation Army’s relief-based services to 1.2 Miles away from Downtown. “Transients” and “street people” are always downtown—because that’s where the Street is.
I feel sure that most people on the Eastside would not agree with the minority-report recommendation of Downtown Lawrence Inc. to the Task Force (Jan. 14, 2005), that a “Single-site [all-City homeless] service facility [should] be located away from the Downtown central business district."
I doubt the Eastside would support such a relocation even if it were proposed to be located on Wakarusa Drive … which is unlikely anyway!
The attached survey of 14 cities in Kansas and Missouri, with populations within 60,000 of Lawrence’s 80,000 count (2000 Census), proves that Salvation Army’s other regional facilities, that offer a “soup kitchen” and/or “transient shelter,” are always located in, or near, Downtown in those cities.
As a resident and landowner on E. 19th St. near Haskell since 1984, I want to tell you that I myself am not at all afraid of “the homeless”—or “transients,” or “crusty punks,” or panhandlers, loiterers, trespassers, et al.
Believe me, we already have plenty of colorful characters around our 19th and Haskell Mini-mall—with its funky Crosstown Tavern, its payday-loan store, its parole-caseworker office, its convenience store and liquor store and video store. Most of these folks are perfectly friendly and humane.
But I—and a lot of other neighbors—feel that Salvation Army should make binding commitments, never to offer Neighborhood-opposed “relief-based” services at this location, thereby creating an “attractive nuisance” here.
Mr. Zinn’s proposal (March 16) to withdraw the Salvation Army’s Site Plan, and to re-submit that Site Plan virtually unchanged, is a legal maneuver which is explicitly intended to perpetuate Salvation Army’s circumvention of any valid neighborhood comment about this location—an immunity that was first allowed in 2003, by the site’s outmoded Industrial zoning.
Astonishingly, Staff’s memo dated “March 28” says about this maneuver:
“This would allow the existing [approved] use of a soup kitchen / transient shelter facility to be automatically given a Special Use Permit as stated in the Development Code Section 20-1306 (b) since it is an existing use allowed by right at the time the use would be established.” (emphasis added)
That is the immunity I am talking about … and those are precisely the two services to which this site’s Eastside neighbors so strenuously object !!
Mr. Zinn also asked Staff to recommend “no initiation” of any rezoning … and Staff has obligingly recommended to You: “No action at this time.”
But unless You, the City Commission, allow a full and fair public hearing on the Burroughs Creek Corridor Plan’s recommended rezoning of this site, next Tuesday—March 28—then in effect, you are endorsing the continued immunity of Salvation Army’s project to the concerns of its immediate neighbors, as to the full spectrum of “approved Uses” at this location.
That’s because, if Salvation Army re-submits their Site Plan under current Code, Staff can unilaterally recommend its approval, and You will still be unable to legally recognize the feelings of the site’s neighbors—because the Plan will still fall under the Sec. 20-1448 “loophole,” and that immunity will be grandfathered even after the Effective Date of the New Code.
In May 2005, Mr. Zinn told the City Commission that “he had been on the [Lawrence Salvation Army] advisory board since the late ‘90’s, working to find a [new] location that would be acceptable to the community.”
If the 800 Lynn St. location is so “acceptable to the community,” then why has the Salvation Army gone to such lengths to evade any effective public hearing on just how “acceptable” it really is, to its Eastside neighbors ?
Does “acceptable to the community” actually mean “acceptable to everyone else in the City of Lawrence except the Eastside neighbors who live near the actual site and its unspecified future Uses” ?
Unless You personally feel it is just fine if Salvation Army is legally free to offer relief-based services such as “soup kitchen” and/or “transient shelter” at this location—in the middle of our neighborhoods which are struggling to revitalize—then You should initiate the site’s downzoning on March 28.
Respectfully submitted:
James W. Grauerholz
1100 East 19th St., Lawrence KS
Brook Creek Neighborhood Assoc. member
Burroughs Creek Corridor Plan study committee member
Attached: Exhibit A, “Study of Salvation Army Locations in Cities Comparable to Lawrence.”
ADDRESSEES:
City Commission
Mayor Dennis Highberger
Vice-Mayor Mike Amyx
Commissioner Sue Hack
Commissioner Mike Rundle
Commissioner David Schauner
COPIED TO:
City Staff
David Corliss, Interim City Mgr.
Debbie Van Saun, Asst. City Mgr.
Sheila Stogsdill, Interim Planning Dir.
Michelle Leininger, Neighborhd Planner
Mark Hecker, Parks & Rec. Parks Dir.
Burroughs Creek Corridor Plan Study Committee members & participants
Anne Underwood, Old East Lawrence NA
Bill Penny, Parks & Rec. Adv. Board
Eric Struckhoff, Bicycle Adv. Comm. Chair
Jim Carpenter, Barker NA
Marguerite Ermeling, LDC Planning Comm.
Richard Heckler, LAN
Michael Almon, Brook Creek NA
Lee Zimmerman, Sr., Zimmerman Steel 701 E. 19th St. BY HAND
Dayna Carleton, Old East Lawrence NA 937 Connecticut BY HAND
Danny Drungilas, Prairie Park NA
Eastside Salvation Army ad-hoc focus group members (some on BCCP)
Matthew Tomc, Pres., Woods on 19th HA
Aaron Brown, Pres, Brook Creek NA
Loralee Stevens, past Pres., Brook Creek NA
Beth Anne Mansur, Brook Creek NA
Craig Comstock, Brook Creek NA
R. J. Noever, Brook Creek NA
Janet Good, Old East Lawrence NA
Chad Lawhorn, Lawrence Journal-World