Master Plans, Green, Federal Grant, Multimodal, Affordable Housing, Sustainable, Partnership, Greenways, Reduced Carbon Footprint, Regional, Engaging Under-represented Stakeholders

Asheville City Council’s consent agenda for Tuesday requests approval of an application for a HUD Sustainable Community Challenge Planning grant valued at $3 million. The funds are available for “preparing for housing and economic developments that are connected to transportation projects.” Proposed uses of the funds include:

• Creating the regulatory environment for sustainable development by integrating existing master plans and revising ordinances and other codes to provide
incentives for sustainability; and to create “form-based” zoning for the area;

• Conducting assessments of infrastructure, connectivity, vacant land and buildings, and general physical conditions in the east Riverside area to determine development capacity in that area;

• Completing pre-development surveys, engineering analyses, and other implementation readiness activities to enable construction of Town Branch and Clingman Forest greenways as soon as implementation funds are available; and preparing for roadway and other improvements in that area;

• Completing pre-development surveys, engineering analyses, preliminary design, and other implementation readiness activities for City and other publicly-owned land in the east Riverside area;

• Assessing public transit needs, potential ridership and other public transit factors to establish multimodal and public-transit capital and operational plans specific to the east Riverside area;

• Assessing the energy use in the area, and prepare for a multi-sectoral approach to reduce the use of non-renewable fuels and reduce the area’s “carbon footprint;”

• Providing new capital to the City’s Housing Trust Fund, to loan for land purchases for affordable housing development in the City’s east Riverside area;

• Involving the community, especially residents, property owners and businesses operators in the east Riverside area, in determining the direction of development there; and

• Supporting a broadly representative and effective partnership to perform the work under the grant, including City departments, non-profit organizations, the Riverfront Redevelopment Commission, Housing Authority and others.

In addition, council will likely approve proceeding to apply for a $2 million grant from the same outfit, but for regional purposes. Prospective projects include:

• Forecasting and modeling growth scenarios in development for 20 years, and determining the integrated needs for affordable housing, transportation, job creation, energy, natural resource utilization and protection over that time period;

• Developing regional agreement about how the region will grow in a sustainable way;

• Establishing regional priorities and criteria to guide development;

• Developing specific benchmarks to evaluate the region’s progress towards sustainability;

• Engaging as many stakeholders as possible in the development on this plan, including engaging and involving the general public and typically underrepresented or affected populations.