Fairhope, Alabama
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| Fairhope growth plan area. |
CURRENT PLAN NOT WORKING?
Public input into the long-anticipated redo of the city's comprehensive growth plan should begin in late September according to mayor Sullivan.
She said senior staff had already held an organizational meeting with the consultant selected by the city council for the task, the planning division of the Neel-Schaffer civil engineering firm.
This is another of the city's projects funded by the RESTORE ACT (2010 BP oil spill fine money) that has been in the works for several years.
Scope of the project: "Planning Services for Fairhope Area Community-Based Comprehensive Land Use Plan. The Scope of Services will include, but may not be limited to, project organization and coordination, community engagement, data collection, development of the land use plan, action plan for goals and prioritizations, community code reviews and updates, and final approval and adoptions, to deliver a complete: Fairhope Area Community-Based Comprehensive Land Use Plan."
The city's current Village-concept Comprehensive Growth plan was adopted almost twenty years ago and has been updated twice; it has been criticized for lack of enforcement, something the new plan is supposed to address.
The "village" plan sought to preserve the downtown business district and encourage commercial growth mostly at major intersections (nodes) in outlying areas (in and out of city limits) versus the usual strip-mall approach found along major roads in most other cities.
Cities in Alabama are required to have growth plans but currently they are not legally binding, to used only as guidelines.
Comments
Let's hope this new plan has some teeth in it, many plans end up on the shelf and big money rules.
See East Town Village (sic) development.
Downtown parking can be atrocious, especially large pickup trucks parking and with their back end projecting out into the roadways reducing a roadway to one lane.
What, exactly, do you think downtown Fairhope would be without commerce?
Sure, we can do better, but doing so does not require vilifying the people who risk their fortunes and offer their blood, sweat, and tears to provide all the wonderful goods and services that the rest of us enjoy here.
Let's not allow the divisive, identity-driven mentality that dominates the Beltway and the media poison our gracious and generous culture.
As for the vilification of long-time families, offer your proofs, because building an argument on paranoid fantasy will not change hearts and minds. The only vilification so far in this story and comment thread is aimed at small business owners--so many of whom have been here for generations, too.
Finally, where in this fair land has the cost of living gone down or even remained static? Ditto population and the traffic attendant thereto. In 1980, the happy year Ronald Reagan was first elected president, our national population was 229 million; today, it's 330 million. That's 100 million new Americans. The nostalgically ideal Fairhope of yore, or even the pretty darn nice Fairhope of today, was bound to draw more than its fair share.
Sometimes, change can be scary, but fear and fear-mongering are reliably destructive. Change is also inevitable; so, let's cooperate to minimize its impact on our high quality of life.
Change is good when done right.
Opinions are only vilification if you take it personally.
How nice Fairhope is today pales to yesterday.
If relativism is the game you wish to play, please list the comparable municipalities that have maintained or increased their "niceness" as you define it and over the same time period of your imagination. Of course, you can offer no such definition or such time frame. Once the criteria become concrete, they must be defended.
Feelings are easy, whereas facts are stubborn things.
Who's facts are correct, yours?
What you imagine is different than what I imagine.
The relativism is instead of demanding someone defend their opinion instead first provide facts as to your disagreement with their opinion.
Just playing by your rules.
On the contrary, the "Fairhope can do no right" attitude is poisoning the well. This blog is littered with examples. Cite one--just one-example of the opposite here.
We'll wait...
Even if it were true, so what? Are the folks in Evergreen so concerned about our provincialism that we risk being cut off from our Conecuh sausage? Will Gulf Shores condo owners refuse our requests to rent on the beach?
As far as I can see, the problem lies elsewhere. How many times has the phrase "rich snobs from Montrose" appeared here? Or "greedy developers"?
Has anyone ever written about the lowlifes in ___________? Nope.
The green monster is ugly, and he distorts reality. Live and let live.
And hardly "blue". If Fairhopians had their way, Roy Moore would be our senator.
You are dead wrong. Read the election canvasses for that primary and general elections. Study how partisan elections work. Read the canvasses again. THEN, share your own thoughts...but not your own facts.