Quick Update: Downtown Charrettes
Fairly belatedly, DDI has managed to figure out venues and times for next weekend and the following weekend's downtown master planning charrette. The 'key stakeholders' (Greenfire, Capitol, etc.) have already been interviewed - this is your chance to give your input as to how downtown would best meet the needs of the public.
April 28th
8:30a-4:30p
Baldwin Building, Ground Floor
109 West Main St. (near Main and Mangum)
Lunch Provided
May 12th
8:30a-4:30p
Baldwin Building, Ground Floor
Lunch Provided
Posts
2 comments:
Gary -
Do you know how the "key stakeholders" were selected? Are they ALL businesses and developers? I ask this because I sit on the Durham Open Space and Trails Commission; we have been working on concepts for managing urban open space in the city for several years now. As I'm sure you know, DOSTC is the primary citizen advisory commission on things related to green space and other similar public space issues, and we do reviews of all development plans that come through the city for compliance with a number of open space requirements. To my knowledge, no one from DOSTC has been approached to be interviewed by DDI in their venture. This seems to be a glaring, um, oversight if they really want balanced input for their planning.
-"kat" aka Paula
Paula
My source on this was a person in a similar position who was pretty miffed that he/she was not part of that 'key stakeholders' group, which he/she stated included the big development players downtown. I don't really know any other details than that, but I agree with you completely. I really don't understand why DDI is coordinating the downtown master plan as opposed to, say, the planning department? I'm not sure that DDI paying for it is a great idea in this respect.
I think Durham Area Designers will do a good job running the charrettes and getting public input. The planning firm hired by DDI to create the plan from that input, Development Concepts, Inc., seems to be a good firm. I guess the question in my mind is, since DDI holds the purse strings, do they dictate which voices get more weight?
GK
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