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Home My WebLink About12-09-21 Public Comment - C. Lee - North Central Master Site Plan 21029From:Ross Knapper To:Lee, Craig Cc:Danielle Garber; Sarah Rosenberg; Agenda; Scott Carpenter; Lesley Gilmore; crystal; pebrown@mt.gov; dmurdo@mt.gov; Martin, Dale Subject:FW: Public Comment, North Central Master Site Plan, Application #21029 Date:Thursday, December 9, 2021 1:16:20 PM Attachments:CL Public Comment, North Central Master Site Plan.docx Dear Craig Lee, Thank you for contacting the City of Bozeman and for submitting public comment for this project via your letter received on December 3, 2021. Community Development does notdirectly comment on or reply to public comments received. Public comments are included in the project record and discussed in the staff report that is forwarded to the Director ofCommunity Development. Best, Ross Knapper | Development Review Coordinator, Community DevelopmentCity of Bozeman | 20 East Olive St. | P.O. Box 1230 | Bozeman, MT 59771406.582.2968 | (C) 406.451.6803 | rknapper@bozeman.net | www.bozeman.net The City has enhanced our project intake process and will now be receiving all project submittals - New and Revisions, through ProjectDox. As a result of this transition in process, response times to inquiries may be delayed. We understand the impacts any delay may create for your site development and we will make every effort to provide you with the highest level of customer service in a timely manner. We encourage you to review our Development Center webpage and become familiar with the new intake process. Your patience during this transition is greatly appreciated. From: Lee, Craig <craig.lee3@montana.edu> Sent: Friday, December 3, 2021 3:56 PM To: Danielle Garber <DGarber@BOZEMAN.NET> Cc: Agenda <agenda@BOZEMAN.NET>; Sarah Rosenberg <SRosenberg@BOZEMAN.NET>; Scott Carpenter <scott@interesources.com>; Lesley Gilmore <lgilmore180@gmail.com>; crystal <crystal@extremehistoryproject.org>; pebrown@mt.gov; dmurdo@mt.gov; Martin, Dale <dlmartin@montana.edu> Subject: Public Comment, North Central Master Site Plan, Application #21029 CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear Ms. Garber, This email follows-up on the email I sent you on 6/10/2021 regarding the prospective demolition of the sanitarium complex, the prospective erection of "The Henry," and other aspects of "North Central." I wish I would have heard back from you. Nevertheless, thank you for this opportunity to provide public comment. I've taken the liberty of Cc'ing a few interested parties, and I will send this email and attachment under separate cover to others to help spread the word in the community. Sincerely, Craig Dear Ms. Garber, Mayor Andrus, Commissioner Coburn, Deputy Mayor Cunningham, Commissioner Madgic, and Commissioner Pomeroy, Thank you or your service, your consideration of my concerns, and hopefully your action on my reasoned request. Bozeman’s sanitarium complex, where I and many generations of Bozemanites were born, has been a source of human kindness and caring—including for our veterans and lower income citizens—for more than 125 years. That sacred space, with its deeply rooted, historically consistent character, is being shredded and rebranded as “North Central…” a space with no parkland, no reasonably priced housing, and a sterile design tailor-made for urban blight in future years. I know, understand, and acknowledge that the community-health legacy of the sanitarium complex will be summarily demolished by its gentrification, and I know you are powerless to change this in toto. The relentless palaver of builders confusing “development” with “progress” is fundamentally at odds with the underpinnings of our community’s fabric. Historic Bozeman’s lovely and wonderful character was a result of long, slow growth. That slow growth is what gave us our diverse and eclectic architecture, and that is in marked contrast to the carbon-copy boxes, including “The Henry,” being touted in the MSP as shown on the City’s “Community Development Viewer” webpage (Figure 1). I am specifically writing in the hopes that the commissioners will impose a responsible interface between “The Henry” portion of North Central and the North Tracy Historic District. Something akin to, and sensitive of, the well-meaning standards codified by our fair City’s “Certificates of Appropriateness” that govern modifications that might change a historic property’s character. Our city has a dedicated Historic Preservation Officer, and in the past, we straightforwardly acknowledged and embraced our roots though COAs and review boards, etc. You can still see the rings of growth in our city even if they are fading. In contrast to the stately evolution that defined our growth and the North Tracy Historic District, the “North Central,” and particularly “The Henry,” are introducing 70 feet/six (6) stories… of generic cityscape into the heart of a neighborhood characterized by one (1) and two (2) story family homes that are more than a century (100 years) old. The northeastern corner of the development will cast a shadowy pall on our city’s only residential historic district on the north side of Main Street. Through the foresight of our previous commissioners, the North Tracy Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places—the official list of our country's historic buildings, districts, sites, structures, and objects worthy of preservation. The two oldest homes are the bedrock core of that district as described on the nomination form accepted by “The Keeper” of the National Register. Those homes are: 322 N Tracy Ave, which was built by George Harrison, in 1890, and another beautifully maintained home to the south, 316 North Tracy. These two single-family homes are due east of the proposed “The Henry.” The six (6) towering stories of “The Henry,” as currently described, will radically alter the integrity of the historic district. The current North Tracy homeowners who chose to purchase and upkeep homes in the district have a reasonable expectation that their investment in community, neighborhood and neighborliness will be protected. The new buildings, and especially “The Henry,” as it is currently envisioned, will reduce the livability of the district. The construction of six story, street-corner to street- corner buildings from Villard to Beall will effectively cause the sun to set on North Tracy properties by 1 PM in the winter time. The Henry will thus not only blight the skyline, but also steal the sun and the sunsets from the neighborhood. It will raise energy costs by removing passive solar heating and concomitantly increase greenhouse gas emissions. It will destroy plant life (and carbon storage) by spreading shade. Creepily, it will provide incongruous and incommensurately voyeuristic views into private backyards. Shouldn’t our citizens be afforded a reasonable expectation of privacy?? Further, in no small measure, “The Henry” will effectively kill the beauty of the only remaining set of stained, plate-glass windows in Bozeman (Figure 2). Any conscionable COA would demand those beautiful windows remain hale and functioning. How is throwing them into permanent shadow in keeping with Mr. Harrison’s intent?! People still crave and appreciate authenticity. What is authentic for this historic neighborhood is a caring medical arts establishment dating back to 1893 with adjacent one (1) and two (2) story homes set back from the sidewalk. People want to live in historic neighborhoods, and they add tangible and intangible value to our lives. The current, unimaginative developers pay lip service to “character,” but in the end, those very developers will not put in one iota of effort to be good neighbors. The City of Bozeman learned a hard lesson through the righteous vitriol associated with the Black Olive debacle regarding the need to stepdown into historic districts. As “The Henry” is currently planned, it is immediately adjacent to the sidewalk and there is no step down from this eyesore to the surrounding neighborhood. By word-of-mouth (and not invitation), we managed to attend two North Central “planning meetings.” We attempted to offer suggestions and opportunities for real dialogue, but it seemingly fell on deaf ears. The planner(s) were never neighborly in coming to us, although they shamble through our neighborhood regularly and send out their minions, such as an “audio technician” from MSU, to ostensibly document “our soundscape” at the absolute busiest times of day. (I imagine this is to set a low benchmark relative to what we, in our quiet neighborhood, actually experience.) Regardless, we were never afforded any opportunities for follow-up. The farcical sketch(es) provided by the developers of what North Central, and particularly “The Henry,” will look like relative to the historic, National Register Listed neighborhood is/are wholly inaccurate and disingenuous. I contend that our City Planners are being shown a “false bill of sale.” For example, in a screen grab of what the developers envision “The Henry” will look like, I call your attention to the left side of the image (Figure 3A), which seems to show an unbuilt white space. In fact, that space is occupied by a 131-year-old house with an ancient willow and a white picket fence built especially to allow for public viewing of a plaque Bozeman provided lauding the historicity and importance of the neighborhood. That plaque sits on the southeast street corner of Villard and North Tracy… the same intersection directly across the street from where the oblivious minds behind “North Central” want to raise a 70-foot-tall building. (Figure 3B shows the real view and Figure 3C shows the 131-year old home.) To help the commissioners better visualize the reality of what’s proposed, I have provided a real-world photo looking to the south along Tracy, showing two of the homes in the historic district, and I have used software to superimpose another one of Bozeman’s new 70 foot-creations in the space planned for “The Henry” (Figure 4). This is yet another “last chance” to see if my city will stand up and protect the last shreds of the Bozeman I was born in, grew up in, and still call home from the pervasive exploitation of visionless development interests (money) that frankly do not give a damn about the original population. Please hear us and please help us. The town of our youth is increasingly unrecognizable. Commissioners -- please do not be ineffectual. The City codes that affect light pollution and noise pollution in residential neighborhoods hold historic sway and precedence on the corners of Villard and Tracy. I live in a working class neighborhood and I work three (3) jobs to be able to afford to live in my home with my loving family. Many of my working class, north-side neighbors are upset by this planned development, but they are unable to leave their work for long enough to come down to the city to respond to this threat. Put simply, they are tapped out. I do not have the endless resources of time nor money to plow through the smoldering piles of hype the developers are pumping into the reams of documents proffered to the city regarding this development. For the love of old Bozeman, and from my heart, I ask you to protect some vestige of the North Tracy Historic district from these outside marauders who stand ready to maul its historicity for their profits. Sincerely, Craig M. Lee, Born Bozeman Deaconess Hospital 1972, Bozeman High Class of 1990, and Montana State class of 1996 Figure 1: Screen grab of Bozeman’s Community Development Viewer from 12/2/2021 showing the area of the Master Site Plan. Electronic document accessed 12/12/2021 (https://gisweb.bozeman.net/Html5Viewer/?viewer=planning). Figure 2: Historic stained glass window panels capturing the evening light in the house George Harrison built in 1890. These windows and this precious sunlight will be essential shuttered if “The Henry” is built as described as the sun will set on this stately old family home at ca. 1 PM. Figure 3: At left, an incompetent artistic attempt from the “Development Application” accessed on the web on 12/2/2021. Note the giant void on the left hand side of the image. Assuming the figure depicted in orange in the center is ca. 6 feet tall, the artist is attempting to sell the viewer on the idea that there is ca. 70 feet of open space from the street to the innocuous white square depicted at the very far left of the image. Item B in the middle is an actual view of the street corner, which is described in the text. At tight is the 131-year-old home and a commemoration of this important historic district. Figure 4: A realistic mock-up looking south from the middle of North Tracy Ave just to the north of the intersection of Villard and Tracy. The small 1.5 story brick structure at the left is the 131-year-old home (322 N Tracy Ave) that George Harrison built in 1890 and an 1892 home (316 N Tracy) is visible just to the south in the distance. At right is an overlay (partially opaque—note the large pine tree behind the image) of a representative 70-foot-tall Bozeman structure that approximates the creativity—and certainly the imposing visage—of “The Henry.”