Town Center Meeting Tonight

As advertised in the Tri-County Leader and Tyler Paper, the City of Whitehouse will be holding a Town Center Advisory Committee Meeting this evening at 6:30 in the Council Chambers. As discussed in the newspaper articles, the purpose of this meeting is to bring the discussions for a Town Center Zoning code to a close. Due to hurricane impacts on consultant time the meeting agenda will be scaled back somewhat. But consultant and city staff members still invite interested stakeholders to attend and participate.

Once compete, the code will be finalized and held until it can be presented to the Planning & Zoning Commission and City Council. Those presentations will take place along with discussions of the community wide zoning ordinance update. The update process for the full zoning ordinance will take several months to complete. However, the Team is hopeful to have both codes ready for presentation by the end of the year.

This blog, and the advisory committee will continue to hold monthly meetings to solicit input from stakeholders and community members on the city-wide code. Once complete, the consultant staff will present graphics and information showing what both codes may "look like" as commercial and residential development occurs.

Stakeholders and community members may also wish to attend and comment during public hearings before the P&Z and City Council. All input will continue to be welcome and encouraged as the Team shifts its focus to the city as a whole.

Lastly, this blog will become more active as the process moves forward. Draft documents, visuals, and other content will be added to prepare for the upcoming public hearings and eventual adoption of both codes. Schedule information will be posted here when it becomes available. Those interested should also continue to follow the local newspapers for announcements and information.

Reminder: Town Center Meeting Tonight

Just a reminder, the Town Center Advisory Committee will be meeting this evening at 6:30 PM to further discuss and finalize the new zoning ordinance for lands planned for Town Center in the Vision 2020 Plan. The meeting will be held in the Whitehouse Council Chambers in the Municipal Court building (Old City Hall). Further details can be found in this week's Tri County Leader. Any Whitehouse community member is welcome and encouraged to attend.

Second Town Center Advisory Committee meeting tonight at 6:30, episode 3 of the project podcast uploaded last Friday

This post is just a reminder to anyone interested in attending tonight's Advisory Committee meeting. The Committee and interested stakeholders will begin looking at details of the new Town Center zoning code. This analysis will form the basis for the full code, which will be presented to the Committee and Planning and Zoning Commission in the coming months. It is very important that anyone with an opinion of how the Town Center should develop attend and participate in this and upcoming meetings. Each opinion will be heard and counted, so please make plans to attend and help guide the committee's decision making process.

Also, those of you with a free subscription to the project podcast should have noticed Episode 3 available for download on Friday. This episode is the second half of the June 2nd Advisory Committee meeting. The main focus of this recording was a discussion of the visual preference exercise results. Be sure to check out the results music video which was also published as a podcast and embedded in this blog. Future episodes of the podcast will be published in the coming weeks, so please subscribe or check here for updates. As always, if you would prefer to not use iTunes or other podcast software, you can download the episodes manually by right clicking here, and choosing "save as."

Visual Preference Exercise results music video is ready to watch (Episode 2 of the project Podcast)

Part 2 of the June 2nd Advisory Committee meeting will be posted Friday morning. The majority of this recording is a discussion of the Visual Preference Exercise results. To refresh the memories of those in attendance, and to give other interested parties a feel for the results, the consultant team has prepared a video slide show. This video (also available in the podcast feed) should be an entertaining presentation of the top rated 15 and bottom rated 5 examples. Keep in mind that the ratings were for the pictures themselves, not the cities as a whole. Participates were rating for how well they felt the examples represented their vision for the Whitehouse Town Center. You can watch the video below or in the podcast feed.

Episode 1 of the project Podcast is now online.

Anyone interested in hearing a recording of the June 2nd Advisory Committee Meeting can do so now. The consultant team will be producing similar audio and video shows throughout the process. Meeting recordings will typically be edited for length to reduce listening time requirements. Episode 2 will include the second half of the June 2nd meeting, and will be posted later in the week.

The show can be downloaded in two ways. The easiest is as a podcast. Podcasts are free subscriptions to audio and video shows which are automatically downloaded and added to portable music players like iPods or Zunes. The show can be found in the iTunes store (a free download for any Mac or Windows users). If you have installed iTunes:

• Click on the "iTunes Store" link on the left to activate the store.
• Once this has opened, type "Whitehouse Town Center" into the store's search box (located at the top right of the screen) and press ENTER.
• You should now see a podcast with the name "Whitehouse Town Center and Comprehensive Zoning Update." Click the subscribe button.
• Now click on the "Podcasts" link on the left to see the podcasts.
• You should see the show here. Click the little triangle to the left of its name to show all available episodes.
• ITunes defaults to only download the latest episode, but you can click the "get" button to download any others that are listed as well. The program will automatically add new shows to this list as they are uploaded by the consultant team.
• Once downloaded you can listen to each episode from your computer, on an mp3 player (including but exclusive to iPods), or burn them to CD.
• If you want to subscribe to the feed with software other than iTunes, the URL is here.
  

If you would prefer to not use iTunes or other podcast software, you can download the episodes manually by right clicking here, and choosing "save as."

Feel free to get in touch with the consultants at whitehouseplan@gmail.com if you need further assistance.

Our heads are in the (word) clouds

In preparing for the upcoming advisory committee meeting, it was helpful to review the public involvement notes from the Vision 2020 Comprehensive Plan. It became obvious that many of the issues important to participants then remain very relevant to the task of planning for the Town Center. To illustrate the point, I generated a Word Cloud (below, click on the image for full sized view) from the meeting recordings. This visualization technique shows the 150 words which were said the most by citizen participants. The size of each word is determined by the number of times it was said.



It is clear from the cloud that concepts such as "Town Center," "mixed use development," "a place for people," "development," and "community" were highly important issues in 2005 when the plan was being developed. Our task as we move forward is to turn these general concepts into concrete plans and regulations.

At our meeting on June 30th the consultant team will present the framework of a zoning code to regulate and promote the Town Center. More details will follow about the meeting, but anyone with an interest in the area should make plans to attend and help us turn a vision into reality.

1st Town Center Advisory Committee meeting Monday at 6:30 pm.

REMINDER: The consultant and City staff will be holding the first Town Center Advisory Committee meeting this Monday (June 2nd) at 6:30 pm in the Whitehouse City Hall council chambers. The meeting will include supplemental surveys of all interested parties regarding the visual and physical direction the district should take for future development. Attendance is important as the discussion undertaken during this meeting will form the basis for draft zoning regulations to be presented at our next session in late June (currently scheduled for June 30th).

Those unable to attend should check this blog for links to download audio of the meeting.
Notifications have been mailed to land owners, a notice was placed at City Hall, and both newspapers will run stories and/or advertisements. However, the team would like to once again use this venue to encourage attendance by anyone interested. Now is the best time to have your opinion counted, and acted upon.

Preliminary survey results are in, but there is still time to submit!

The consultant team has received a portion of the Town Center surveys back from respondents. Responses will continue to be accepted for a few more weeks. Also, anyone who is interested in participating is encouraged to do so. The original survey was distributed to Town Center property owners and city officials. While the responses of these individuals will remain separate, the opinion of other community members is also welcome. If you are interested participating in either the general or visual preference portions of the survey, please contact the consultant at whitehouseplan@gmail.com.

For those who are interested, the preliminary results for the general survey are as follows:

1. Respondents would like a Town Center which is accessed by automobile but offers strong internal pedestrian circulation.
2. Respondents UNANIMOUSLY desired a Town Center which resembles a small downtown.
3. Respondents UNANIMOUSLY believed that projects in the Town Center should not be large-scale in nature.
4. Respondents UNANIMOUSLY desired more flexibility for zero lot line/setback developments.
5. Respondents were evenly divided over the issue of holding projects developed in the Town Center to a higher aesthetic standard.
6. Respondents NARROWLY believed that the City should be willing loose a development project if it does not meet the Town Center vision established by this project.
7. Respondents NARROWLY believed that projects in the Town Center should be limited in height.
8. Respondents UNANIMOUSLY believed that mixed-use development should be allowed in the Town Center.
9. Respondents desired a combination of vertical and horizontal mixed-use development in the Town Center.
10. Respondents UNANIMOUSLY believed that the City should consider establishing development incentives for the Town Center.
11. Respondents UNANIMOUSLY believed that the City should consider establishing development partnerships with WISD and or the private sector.
12. Respondents STRONGLY believed that publicly owned sites should be considered for redevelopment consistent with the established Town Center vision.

The online component (visual preference) also has some preliminary results to report:

So far the respondents have supported low intensity multi-story structures. Mixed-use, both in terms of commercial/residential, and various types of commercial have been supported. Respondents have also shown an affinity for historically themed architecture which is conservative in nature. Highly rated examples in the visual preference portion of the survey reinforce most of the preliminary general survey opinions as well. Aesthetic values such as pedestrian friendly design and architectural form and character show consistently high ratings for both surveys. High intensity development patterns have been rated poorly. Likewise, architectural/signage components which are overly modern or conspicuous have received consistently low ratings.

As mentioned previously, these results are very early and subject to change. It is expected that additional submissions may drastically alter the results upon final tabulation. It is important that each and every stakeholder and community member take part in this survey (and overall planning process). The end result of this project will be new zoning regulations for the Town Center and city at large. Now is the time to have your opinion influence what these ordinances require for future development.