All -  We are at 964 signatures!!!   GREAT JOB!  We now need to address the expected media push back.

Please consider posting this rebuttal to your Decatur neighborhood media groups.

Patti Garrett, City of Decatur Mayor, posted an opinion piece regarding this petition and the Facebook group. We do not have access to each of the neighborhood lists so please consider posting this reply on behalf of Legacy Park Voice.

1. Land-  It is hard to comprehend why the Decatur Community is losing 8 acres of land (8 @ 1.5M ea is 12Million) plus additional money for a % of the houses at Legacy Park being affordable housing. The remainder of the houses are market rate. Our 2018 vote did not agree to this magnitude of land loss.

Eight Acres of land is enough for:

• 8 tennis Courts (1acre ea)  or
• 6 football fields (1.32 acre ea)  or
• 2 1/2 baseball fields (3 acre ea)

2. Land - It is not 8 acres of 77 acres. It is 8 acres of the AVAILABLE build-able park land.  Once we take away the lake, swamp, flood plane, existing buildings, locations already assigned for the track and field space there is little land remaining at the park. Looking at the topology map for the park.  The housing is in the yellow shaded area and the blue circled area is hilly headed down to the flood plane.  It appears the housing is taking closer to 8 of 15 acres of the available build-able land at the park.

3. Public Engagement is how many events were held to communicate the change to the Decatur Community, not how event notices were communicated.There were three public meetings for this massive change.

•  April 10, 19 : Private meeting of the affordable housing stakeholder group. This was not open to the public, so it is not public outreach.
• April 13, ’19 : Affordable Housing Workshop.  From Decaturish “After April 13, a sketch affordable housing model will be available for community members, which will be subject to more feedback and revisions.”  No specifics on the plan presented here.   
• May 21, ’19 : Winnona Park, last 30 minutes of the meeting (meeting was recorded). When asked, no specifics given on number of units, amount of land nor cost, number of residents, impact to infrastructure. No specifics on the plan presented here. 
• July 15, ’19  City Commission Work Session. We are not sure what was included at this meeting as we can not find the meeting minutes yet.  We are looking for them.
• We know of no Community Meetings showing the final plan to the Decatur Public before it went to Committee. If they truly wanted community review of the plan, it is here in the timeline we would see Community Approval.
• Dec 10th,’19 - First known opportunity to view of the updated plan is at this Planning Commission meeting. So, unless you follow the planning commission, you would not have seen this.
• Dec 16, ’19 – City Commission approval of the plan 5 days later.

4. Buildings “duplexes, quadplexes, multiplexes. (By comparison, the units in the townhome development across from Legacy Park are 3 stories.)”.  (ref: Housing Addendum Pg 279).

Yes, the townhouses are SMALLER than the Multiplex

• 4 Story Multiplexes with 25 units and “1,200 square feet per unit, max.”
• 3 Story Quadplexes with 4-8 units and “1,500 square feet per unit, max”
• 2 Story Duplexes with 2 units and “2,800 square feet per unit

5. Buildings. The Legacy Park Master Plan building illustrations show the south housing buildings one story shorter than its description. The Hargrove townhouses are 3 stories and 35’ high. The Multiplexes are four stories and 50’ high.

Also the area around the Multiplexes are shown with diminished impact surrounded by trees, but there is an apparent attempt to make Hargrove look bigger by making it a big white blob. 

Lastly, we as a community are concerned with what is being built on Our Legacy Park Land, not what the neighbor built.

6. Residents : “Numbers that indicate 600-700 residents are difficult to substantiate since size limitations on types of housing planned will more likely result in more studio and one-bedrooms than any other size.” 

The estimate is 500-600 people, not 600-700. Of course, I would prefer to see the estimate and costs coming from the master plan and that it shows a impact range and not downplay the number of people housed at the park.

The math:

• With 175 units, at 2 each, that is 350 people.
• OK, now let us say half of the 175 have two bedrooms. That is 175/2 = 85 bedrooms at 2 people each.  That is 175 people.
• 350 + 175 = 525 people.

Yes, we stand by the estimate.

I understand that there are housing models with % full but we are doing simple first grade math sense math. The point of the resident numbers is to provide a level of impact to the park. It does not really matter if it is 600 or 450 ... that is a LOT of people and it fundamentally changes the park.

7. Housing Density: “A quick calculation shows that the North and South Housing Villages would occupy a combined area of less than 8 acres out of the total 77 acres. If you take 175 units and divide it by 8 acres, that’s less than 22 units per acre. According to the City’s zoning code 22 units per acre is medium density residential uses”

First, this is like saying you can use single family houses a half mile away to include in your density calculation.  The land use is 8 acres COMBINED from the North and South housing areas.  The north area are cottages.  The South is three and four story buildings.  The south side is high density housing.  And frankly, this does not matter because 91% of the Community did not vote for this but they did it anyway.

8. Unit Count.  The Master Plan “did not call out the specific number of dwelling units”.  

Yes, it did.  “80 units added in two housing villages located on the northern and southern property lines “  Master Plan, page 7.3. 

Thank you for supporting Legacy Park Voice so we can have a say in our park's design.

Legacy Park Voice

sign our petition: https://www.change.org/LegacyParkVoice