HomeMy WebLinkAbout06-25-16, Greenwood, Midtown Public CommentWe live in the slice of houses that are being discussed for re-zoning from R-4 to R-5 in the
Midtown North Neighborhood. The people in this little neighborhood are a very cohesive group
and are concerned about changes in the zoning and the potential for these changes in zoning to
creep from the Lamme and Mendenhall slice further into the core and to impact the nature of our neighborhood.
We appreciated being able to express our concerns in various formats including the most recent
presentation to the neighborhood on June 15th. Many of the concerns voiced were about loss of
value, showing the passion that we all have for our neighborhood. This loss could take two forms – loss of housing resale value and loss of quality of life. I would not be surprised if the re-zoning
caused an increase in housing costs as it allows more potential uses of the lots in the future and it
might even succeed in causing more high density developments in our neighborhood. But the
loss in the quality of life is most concerning to us. My main concern relates to bringing retail and
restaurants into the neighborhood.
Our neighborhood is a great place to live and many of us have invested in improving and
maintaining our houses with plans to stay long term in them because of the quality of life they
provide. We do struggle with parking, especially during the school year. It seems the main
difference between R-4 and R-5 involves the commercial spaces that would lead to higher numbers of cars in the neighborhood during the day (commercial or restaurants) and at night
(restaurants). We think we are already over capacity during the workday in these areas. We
would encourage you to study the parking issues in our neighborhood, to consider extending the
high school parking district all the way to N 7th, to motivate enforcement of those parking
regulations, and, mainly, to prevent any increases in potential density of any kind without first understanding the parking issues we already face. There was discussion of a study of parking
occupancy rates on N. 7th so maybe we should wait on re-zoning this area until we understand
our local parking issues.
I also have to object to one assumption that seems implicit in some recent developments along Lamme (Block M), on the 500 block of E. Mendenhall, and in the “shared use” parking that has
been mentioned for bringing commercial into our neighborhood with R-5 zoning. It implies that
if developments are made less car-centric (close to services) that the demand for parking will be
lower as spaces are used differently in different times of the day – that people won’t have cars? I
think it is great when people can forgo using their cars, but, in Bozeman, this will not eliminate the need for places for those cars during the day. Many people in our neighborhood are able to
bike or walk to work and leave their cars at home during the day – this seems to prevent the
potential for “business” uses of those spots during the day – the exact thing that having
commercial space in a neighborhood would rely on.
Most of our neighborhood was developed in the late 50s and early 60s and it was and has
remained relatively affordable housing stock. If the re-zoning is successful and causes re-
development it likely will eliminate a small neighborhood of reasonably affordable homes that
offer high walkability and will be replaced with high priced condos/apartments.
It seems like the city is trying to mandate new developments be like our neighborhood with
modest houses on smaller lots close to services and at the same time this change seems to seek to
reduce houses with these features in existing housing stock. Please at least take some additional
time to study our neighborhood further before making these changes.
Thank you for delaying this decision enough to allow us to have input on the process and for
listening to the appeals from our neighbors. Please vote against the re-zoning on Monday.
Mark and Teresa Greenwood
119 N 10th Ave
Bozeman, MT