If you are unfortunate enough live in the area directly affected by the impending Stonehouse development, you would have received the above postcard in the mail this week. The above scan was sent to me yesterday with this accompanying note:
We got a notice from the city about the proposed Stonehouse development. The original settlement agreement was for 19 houses on a certain tract of land. The houses all had a maximum size etc. The new plan will be for fewer houses - that is 13 bigger houses … It's at the regular planning commission meeting on May 15th. Public input will be taken as well as a presentation from the developer.
So now in addition to One Carter (Stonegate), and whatever the as yet unrevealed blitzkrieg of building being planned for Mater Dolorosa might be (which could be upwards of 60 tightly packed jumbo, though blessed, units), we can now add Stonehouse to the mix. Meaning we now have a three part swath of proposed McMansion development here, stretching all the way from Santa Anita Boulevard to Michillinda.
The malarkey being baked into this Stonehouse effort is the developer will no longer insist on packing 19 houses into that area, and instead is willing to compromise and bring that number down to 13. All that is being asked is that the fellow be permitted to make these remaining barns a little larger.
The language used on this card is kind of amusing in a gallows humor sort of way. "A revision to the maximum allowable floor areas." Why the City couldn't say "the developer wants to make them a lot bigger," or something similarly understandable, is kind of problematic. Especially if you are annoyed by the linguistic waterboarding of that perfectly innocent language we call English.
Below is a cell phone picture of the then site plan for the Stonehouse project, taken at a neighborhood meeting last December.
For a town that ran out of water not too long ago this all seems a bit zealous. But since we also know that in our town the mad rush for development money has today trumped anything to do with a concern for sustainability (a word that is now apparently so 2011 in Sierra Madre), anything goes. Obviously government here doesn't do sanity all that well anymore.
And I guess it also means that the whole EENER thing really was just a big joke all along, right?
And I guess it also means that the whole EENER thing really was just a big joke all along, right?
This matter will all be revealed for the world to see at the Planning Commission meeting on May 15. I am pretty certain this will be presented as being some sort of noble compromise on the developer's part, and in return the community would have to be seen as big ingrates if it did not permit the fellow to make the remaining houses as big as he can in the available space.
Which makes this a variation on the shady tactics employed for the similarly immense Kensington project. Something that, at this moment, is the immense pile of wood on Sierra Madre Boulevard now casting its first shadows over City Hall.
Which makes this a variation on the shady tactics employed for the similarly immense Kensington project. Something that, at this moment, is the immense pile of wood on Sierra Madre Boulevard now casting its first shadows over City Hall.
Once again, we're talking "maximum permissible gross floor areas." With the mystery word here being "permissible." I guess we'll soon find out what Development Dan and R. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, along with the always helpful and generously coiffed City Attorney Holly "Go" Whatley, believe that might be.
Remember, size really does matter at Development Services. It makes the fee haul that much larger. They do have $36,000 a year health plans to fund, you know.
Remember, size really does matter at Development Services. It makes the fee haul that much larger. They do have $36,000 a year health plans to fund, you know.
My guess is it always was going to be that lucky 13 figure. 19 houses being a kind of straw man number, originally thrown out there to give the DevServe apparatus an eventual public relations paper victory to wave in front of those opposed to the McMansionization of Sierra Madre.
Managing the expectations of residents being just one of the many services offered by a City Hall sustained by the tax money of those needing to be managed.
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