The Neighbors for Sustainable Development in Trinity Park has, with the aid of the Trinity Park Neighborhood Association, managed to kill the 48-unit Chancellory at Trinity Park condo project. The neighborhood “activists” felt it was too tall and might block the sun from someone’s house, basically. Well, they got their way yesterday when the Board of Adjustment refused a continuance request made by the condo developers and refused to allow a variance to accommodate the project.
I live in Trinity Park but I don’t have a dog in this fight, as neither do most of the people who fought the project. I don’t live near enough to the area in question to presume to pass judgment, but, personally, I didn’t see all the problems that the two associations saw in the condos. In fact, I saw it as a guaranteed improvement as opposed to throwing the dice in the future.
Right now there’s a bombed out hospital that is home to vagrants. Prior to that there was a bus station through which all kinds of sketchy people passed 24 hours a day. Thankfully, the bus station is now a parking lot. But what will come later. Will Park City Developers pare down the project? Would it be economically feasible to do that? Maybe. But if they bail, who knows what might end up there. Size notwithstanding, the Chancellory was a quality project.
The same people who killed this project are the very ones who favor denser development in the inner city. What, I ask, was the Chancellory project if not that? I guess “sustainable” means “as long as it doesn’t affect me.” Why does this remind me of Ted Kennedy’s windmills?
UPDATE: Bull City Rising blogger Kevin Davis has some of the same concerns I have about spurning a quality development, though larger than most would like, in favor of an unknown and possibly less savory one in the future. But he points out, rightly, that developers who bait and switch are responsible for neighborhood skepticism.
