Madame President and Members
of the Council — thank you for your time. I’m Bethany Gladhill, President of the
Summit Avenue Residential Preservation Association.
SARPA was formed under
Latimer administration in 1986, with a mission to “preserve the historic,
residential, and urban park character of Summit Avenue.”
We are an all-volunteer group,
with activities ranging from public gardens to lectures to historic
preservation and land use.
I’m on SARPA because I own
the home my parents bought for $20,000 in 1965. It’s the home I hope to leave
to my daughter. In my day job, I’m a preservation planner (and non-profit
consultant).
Summit is full of all kinds
of people. Young families, retirees, bigger houses, condos, chicken-keepers,
socialites, everything in between. What unites us is being a part of the
longest intact Victorian boulevard remaining in the US.
Every town once had a Summit
Avenue. What makes it unique NOW is that we have the only one left of its scale.
Think of Park Avenue in Minneapolis, Detroit’s Grand Boulevard, or Meridian
Street in Indianapolis. All have lost their original character, their special
sense of place. We don’t want to — we can’t — let that happen to Summit.
SARPA does not oppose this
property because we don’t like the developer, or because we are against people
staying in hotels, or for any personal reasons, much as some might try to make
the issue about that.
Nor do we compare it to the
previous use, a CUP that has expired for a several-years-closed college. That’s
not the case at hand.
We’re here because we —
simply enough — oppose commercial development on Summit. We support the City
PED staff who recommend denial of the permit in their reports, based on the
fact that it is not an appropriate use in a residential RT-2 area. It may seem
like a small issue, but it can quickly escalate to a bigger one, as we have all
seen in the past. We believe that the Planning Commission erred in permitting
the use. Please reverse the decision.
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