By Ryan Lengerich in The News-Sentinel
Allen County should focus on creating neighborhoods with nearby retail, community centers and green space, a consultant told city and county planning officials Tuesday.
Members of the city-county Comprehensive Plan Committee listened for more than two hours as Kim Littleton of ACP-Visioning and Planning in Columbus, Ohio, outlined land-use goals and projected where and how the county will grow.
The meeting was another step toward developing the first comprehensive land-use and development plan for the city and county. "Plan-it Allen!," now in a draft phase, must be approved by city and county plan commissions, which could happen by year's end.
Littleton challenged committee members to think about how they will address population growth projected at 68,000 people in the next 20 years.
"Neighborhoods are the building block of the community," Littleton said. "We want to create a community that works efficiently, not just looks efficient."
Littleton said the county needs to maximize land containing higher-density housing, while planning for greenbelts, or areas of green space within a community, and stores and public transportation stops within walking distance of where people live. He said commercial retail should exist within neighborhoods, a move that would force planning commissions to zone land for multiple uses.
Allan Frisinger, county plan commission vice president, said he remembers growing up in areas where businesses, parks and schools were within walking distance.
"Mixed-use development is something that has probably been ignored for a long time," Frisinger said. "It doesn't hurt to think along the lines that we need to go away from this segregated block of residential, block of commercial, block of industrial."
Littleton presented a map showing about 61,000 acres in the county are available for development with sewer service, much of it north and west. Committee members will decide in upcoming months whether that is the direction they want the county to continue to grow.
Mike Bynum, city plan commission president, said he envisions potential growth downtown.
"What we are finding a lot is people want to see downtown development, and the high-density housing would be apartments. A lot of your younger people want to move to the downtown areas to have those lofts or apartments where you can walk within a certain area to do things -- not just move out to the suburbs."
Posted by Admin at April 1, 2005 08:27 AM