By Benjamin Nicholls<\/p>\n
You might have missed it but, over the last few months, the city\u2019s Planning Department rolled up its sleeves and got busy creating a new neighborhood plan for Hillcrest and Uptown.<\/p>\n
The Uptown Community Plan will guide new development and growth in Uptown for decades to come.\u00a0Last week, city staff presented the most recent proposals for the Uptown plan and guess what? They\u2019re pretty good!\u00a0I say this because many of the new proposals are ones that have the quiet support of most residents and business people in Hillcrest.<\/p>\n
When the plan update process began in 2009, the Hillcrest Business Association (HBA) hosted a series of forums for our members called Hillcrest 2.0.\u00a0Hundreds of community members attended, along with Planning Department staff, students, City Council staff and many expert speakers.<\/p>\n
From that series came a wide variety of ideas and suggestions that were passed onto the Planning Department staff back in 2011.\u00a0Many of those ideas, developed by a well-attended community process, have now ended up in the proposed community plan.<\/p>\n
Most Hillcrest business people and customers report to us that they favor Little Italy-style development for Hillcrest.\u00a0Our members want more housing, appropriate development, professional offices and community improvements.\u00a0The city\u2019s plan to provide 109 dwelling units per acre and varying building height limits between 65 feet and 120 feet in the commercial core (with appropriate community review) will create an environment that is very similar to Little Italy.\u00a0These proposals match almost exactly the proposals made by the HBA\u2019s members back in 2011.<\/p>\n
Back then, the HBA\u2019s members also proposed getting involved in a national preservation and economic development movement called National Main Street.\u00a0This method of pairing historic preservation and economic development is part of the National Trust for Historic Places and balances historic preservation and growth.\u00a0Coronado, North Park and many of the beach cities participate in this program.\u00a0I am happy to say that the city has removed the \u201cproposed historic district\u201d that some had asked for in the heart of Hillcrest.\u00a0A district such as this would stymie plans to revitalize and improve the heart of our business district.\u00a0This also clears the way for the HBA to move forward with an application for Hillcrest to join the National Main Street movement.<\/p>\n
Planning a neighborhood is not an easy feat.\u00a0The HBA applauds the city\u2019s Planning Department for listening to the business community and the many voices (most who don\u2019t make it to the Uptown Planners each month) when they ask for reasonable growth for Hillcrest.<\/p>\n
\u2014Benjamin Nicholls is executive director<\/em>\u00a0de El <\/em>Hillcrest Business Association.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Benjamin Nicholls You might have missed it but, over the last few months, the city\u2019s Planning Department rolled up its sleeves and got busy creating a new neighborhood plan for Hillcrest and Uptown. The Uptown Community Plan will guide new development and growth in Uptown for decades to come.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1331,"featured_media":250049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Guest editorial: HBA\u2019s view on Uptown Community Plan update","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11552,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-opinion","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}