According to Councilor Bill Summers, “this land fits right in where the rails to trails effort has been needed” and adds another piece to help fill gaps from the River Walk, through Fort Defiance, toward Kenwood High and the new pedestrian overpass, along the Red River toward the West Creek school complex and Tiny Town Road. The land is a mixture of pasture and woodlands. The land had a 2003 appraised value of almost $171,000.

This parcel of land was first mentioned several months ago when the city agreed to fund the $1.2 million dollar purchase of six acres of riverfront land adjacent to the existing Riverfront Park. At that time in a City Council meeting, Mayor Piper referred to the land donation as being linked or connected to the purchase of the waterfront acreage. The donation of land was not discussed when the Council voted to purchase the six acre parcel.

Summers said: “I have few doubts that the land is worth much more today due to the development explosion and road expansion of the 101st and Peachers Mill in the past couple of years. We are very thankful to the Pressler family for this donation to our city.”

On the steps of our historic County Courthouse, a group of grassroots advocate citizens gave voice to an exercise that the founding fathers would have cherished. Members of the Clarksville Property Rights Coalition (CPRC), stood on the courthouse steps to declare their intent to protect their First Amendment Right of Free Speech in their criticism of government.

Bert Gall, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, stood with the group to announce that The Institute for Justice has risen to coalition’s defense in a defamation lawsuit following publication of an ad by the group that stated that the plaintiffs, Richard Swift and Wayne Wilkinson, are developers and that as developers, they are using the power of government to benefit developers. Gall said that the lawsuit is frivolous on its face and it represents a callous attempt by government officials to silence and intimidate critics among the general public and the affected community in particular.

The Institute for Justice is a non-profit public interest law firm that litigates on behalf of individuals whose rights are being violated by the government. Bert litigates property rights cases across the country. Most recently he represented home and business owners in Norwood v. Horney, the first eminent domain abuse case to be argued in front of and decided by a state supreme court in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Kelo v. City of New London.

In the Norwood case, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the Kelo decision and held that the City of Norwood could not use eminent domain to take ordinary homes and businesses for private development. Also, through litigation and grassroots efforts, Bert helped a neighborhood in Lakewood, Ohio, gets its blight designation reversed. From August 2005 to August 2006, he directed the legislative, grassroots and education activities of the Castle Coalition’s “Hands Off My Home” campaign. The campaign’s goal is to achieve real reform that will protect ordinary Americans against the abuse of eminent domain.

According to their press release, The Institute for Justice seeks to vindicate the group’s right to protest eminent domain abuse. The CRPC is a grassroots citizens group who joined together to fight a redevelopment plan that threatened to subject their city to eminent domain for private gain. To better inform the public about the plan and its danger, they ran an ad in the local newspaper criticizing elected officials and developers for abusing eminent domain. For exercising their right of free speech and grassroots activism, they got sued.  Six days after the ad appeared and the City Council had voted to approve the final striped down revision of the ordinance, Swift, who is a member of the Clarksville City Council and a developer, and Wilkinson, a member of the Clarksville Downtown District Partnership and also a developer, together filed a defamation lawsuit against the group and its members, seeking $500,0oo in damages.

In short, Swift and Wilkinson are developers, using the power of government to benefit developers and they sued citizens for saying so. For home and small business owners in Clarksville and nationwide, the ability to protect what they own depends on their right to speak freely, especially after the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to eminent domain abuse in its infamous Kelo decision. Since the Kelo ruling, protest is the most effective way for property owners to defend what is rightfully theirs.

The Institute for Justice contends that politicians and developers across the nation accused of abusing eminent domain for private gain are trying, through the threat of litigation, to muzzle property owners who speak out to defend their neighborhood. “If politicians and public figures could sue anyone who criticized them, everyone in America would need a lawyer.” As the institute declares, “Under the First Amendment, you shouldn’t need a lawyer to speak out about politics.”

Dr. Rebecca Slayden-McMahan said she’s “insulted by the behavior of our elected officials and ashamed of their conduct.” She noted that with the approaching anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and 4th of July, here we are “having to defend ourselves from the very government that was designed to protect and defend us as citizens. The ability to protect what is rightfully ours depends on the right to speak freely.”

“The Leaf Chronicle ad was an attempt by CPRC to communicate with the people of Clarksville and urge them to contact their council representatives and voice their opinion regarding the redevelopment plan and the enabling legislation of the ordinance.” In her own remarks, she declared that “the information in the ad is accurate and factual. This lawsuit is frivolous and threatens our civil liberties and First Amendment Rights.”

As citizens, we all have a First Amendment right to speak out against government abuses without being sued for exercising that speech by the very people whose actions we are protesting. Characterizing the city government structure as a developer-driven government, Dr. Slayden-McMahan regards the council as a bunch of thin-skinned bullies that “don’t want anyone else playing in their sandbox, …and attempt to silence their critics with frivolous litigation; …we are involved because is not only our right but our obligation to be enlightened and engaged citizens.”

In closing her remarks, she quoted U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, “To stand in silence ,when they should protest, makes cowards of men.” And in reference to the lawsuit’s accusation of defamation, Dr. Slayden-McMahan again deferred to Lincoln, quoting, “What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.”

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The Institute for Justice will stand with the Clarksville Property Rights Coalition on Monday, June 30, at 11 a.m. on the steps of the Montgomery County Courthouse at Millenium Plaza [corner of 2nd and Commerce Streets], to announce their legal plan to fight back against what they see as a “frivolous” defamation lawsuit filed by Clarksville City Councilmember Richard Swift and Wayne Wilkinson, a member of Clarksville’s Downtown Development Partnership. ”

Making the announcement will be Bert Gall, Senior Attorney for the Institute for Justice, and CPRC members Debbie Hunt, a homeowner, Joyce Vanderbilt, owner of Kelly’s Big Burger, and Dr. Rebecca Slayden-McMahan.

IJ is a non-profit, public interest law firm that has a long and successful history of defending property rights and First Amendment freedoms nationwide.

The CPRC, a grassroots group, was formed in November, 2007, to fight the abuse of eminent domain after a controversial redevelopment and urban renewal plan was passed by the Clarksville City Council. The plan designated two square miles of downtown property as “blighted.”

CPRC member Joyce Vanderbilt, owners of Kelly’s Big Burger, with the controversial ad that is the subject of a pending lawsuit

CPRC members joined together to fight the plan, which threatens their city with eminent domain for private gain. To better inform the public about the plan and its dangers, they ran an ad in the local newspaper criticizing elected officials and developers, including Swift and Wilkinson, for abusing eminent domain.

The ad, noting that both Swift and Wilkinson are developers, said, “This Redevelopment Plan is of the developers, by the developers, and for the developers.” Six days after the ad appeared, Swift and Wilkinson sued the group and its members and demanded $500,000.

But all citizens have a First Amendment right to speak out against government abuse—without getting sued for their speech by the very people whose actions they are protesting. To ensure that right, the Institute for Justice is stepping in to defend the members of the Clarksville Property Rights Coalition from Swift and Wilkinson’s heavy-handed attempt to silence and intimidate their critics.

For more information on the redevelopment plan, the CPRC, and the lawsuit, click the “black box” on the right hand column of this page. All Clarksville Online stories, photos and videotape on this issue are archived there.

For more information on this breaking story, call Lisa Knepper, Director of Communications, at (703) 682-9320.

In leading up to the list for this monthly magazine aimed at male readers [with the survey actually targeting fathers in search of family friendly communities, researcher Sara Vigneri wrote:

"...fathers face reality when they're not in prime time. They want to raise their children somewhere safe [ed. note: read "low crime"], where they can attend good schools with favorable student-teacher ratios, above-average test scores, and respectable budgets. Plenty of museums, parks, and pediatricians also contribute to a good quality of life, whereas multihour commutes, expensive houses, and divorcing friends and neighbors do not.”

The top “family friendly” spots across the country included Honolulu with school spending of $9000 per student, Madison WI for the high number of pediatricians accessible to families; Seattle WA for its $266 per capita spending on city parks and public areas; El Paso Texas with a median student/teacher ratio of 16:1; Tulsa OK with an average 17-minute commute for its workers; Honolulu, Hawaii for its unemployment rate at half the national average, and its beaches (which is a given — hey, you’re on a island!). Las Vegas, where our city leaders are currently marketing our city to mall developers, ranked 32nd on the list.

Other cities that handily topped Clarksville: Salinas CA (despite its earthquake ravaged landscape, it has made a wonderful comeback); Stamford CT (a nice southern New England community); Boise Idaho with the accessible landscape and college community; Manchester NH; Ann Arbor MI; Oceanside CA, Buffalo NY and more. The “losing cities on that bottom ten included Flint MI, Dayton Ohio, and Beaumont TX. The listing reflects data culled from an evaluation of 257 U.S. cities using statistics and information provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, National Center for Education Statistics, FBI, American Association of Museums, National Center for Health Statistics and American Bar Association.

Readers should also keep in mind that some of these statistics are more than a year or two old before they are compiled into a report that can be used by journalists. Not that it makes a major shift in the issues I now address. The report, which was discussed on the May 19 Today Show on NBC, cited “$6,729 per student, per school year” as inadequate by the magazine’s rating, and that it is a figure the School Department challenges with the statement that it spent $7,494 per student. National databases may not yet reflect that number.

Clarksville’s best resource is its people. It holds a diverse population that includes a high percentage of military families, due to the presence of Fort Campbell. The number of retirees, listed at 8%, is lower than the national average. It is more and more a young family town.

Yes, housing is exceptionally affordable here in contrast to the rest of the nation. Clarksville is a city on the grow, working to attract new business and industry. But it is this unchecked growth that brings with it a host of new problems, especially in terms of the needs of families. Its infrastructure is not keeping up with the pace of development, as heavy traffic and perpetually clogged main arteries prove. Some of the road/traffic design, especially on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard at the new 101st overpass, is sheer lunacy: without reflective aids, a driver can’t even see the marked traffic lines at night and the traffic lights are not aligned correctly with the lanes. Confusion reigns. Ergo, avoid the intersection and its surrounding shopping at all costs/it’s just too aggravating.

Many schools are overcrowded, packed too tightly, and though new school construction will temporarily ease that issue, the unchecked growth in family housing will quickly refill those buildings. Back to Square One.

Clarksville children are isolated from many activities by virtue of distance from, well, just about everything. It is completely unsafe for a youngster (or anyone) to ride a bike along most Clarksville roadways. The lack of bike lanes is abominable. Children living in most new housing developments are completely dependent on mom and dad for rides to everywhere they need to go. More mini parks and pools, please. They can’t even walk safely in many areas due to lack of sidewalks.

One of the biggest ironies in that department is the Airport mini-park adjacent to Outlaw Field, which of and by itself emerged in prolonged piecemeal development; it has a playscape and a pair of basketball hoops set in a grassy nook beside the airport fence, it has a children’s playscape. There are no sidewalks, so access to the park is gained by walking alongside the well-traveled two-lane road that connects Tiny-Town Road and Jack Miller Boulevard. Secondary access comes from walking the railroad tracks that bisect the neighborhood. Many youngsters pass the time climbing the railroad flatbed cars and other equipment stored, sitting dormant, there, virtually every day of the week.

Clarksville has several military-oriented sites, a nice but small downtown museum, a small but wonderful art community, the Roxy Regional Theater (a cultural blessing for the city), Dunbar Cave (a hidden treasure and boon for naturalists), bowling alleys, and quite a few sports fields — most of which require — here we go again — access by mom or dad’s car.

Clarksville does have an exceptional library with good summer programs for children. It has a large computer lab, providing internet access for many city residents. Its growing collection of music and DVDs reflects the diversity of the city and the creativity of the library staff. The Pageant Lane library does have truth in advertising: there is something for everyone there. And it’s on a bus line.

How many times will a family visit the Customs House (apart from special programs)? How many times will someone visit Fort Donelson or other sites and monuments around town? What about the children who are NOT involved in sports? There are few options, so… stay home and play video games? Surf the net? Hang out, bored and ripe for trouble?

The city boasts an ever growing median income, but the job roster is littered with low-paying jobs that don’t meet the living wage criteria for pay with and/or without benefits. When some professional support services offer $10 an hour for master degree’d workers, it becomes a joke. Eight or nine dollars an hour is NOT a good pay scale; it’s certainly not a living wage (neither is the current minimum wage).

Clarksville charges a fairly high price for access to city pools, but once again, most kids require a ride to and from the pool. Some, like the Swan Lake complex, are not accessible without private transportation. They are certainly not within walking distance for most families.

Clarksville’s bus system is good for what it does; it just doesn’t do enough or go far enough. Any city worth a “top spot” rating needs exceptional mass transit. That means later nightime buses, Sunday service, cross-town buses, a terminal (not a WalMart Parking Lot stop) at the end of each major run (i.e. at north Clarksville, the northern end of Wilma Rudolph, and Sango). They need cross town buses that cover North Clarksville, rather than routing riders south all the way downtown just to go north again on the other side of town. More benches and “weather shelters” at more stops would make the system user-friendly.

Drive down Fort Campbell Boulevard and see the pawn shops, title loan companies, the bright blinding neon orange fireworks shop, used car lots, fast food eateries, and WalMart. It doesn’t look good; it’s not appealing to newcomers.

While the high cost of gas is further crimping the family dollar, this “top spot” city is so hellbent on housing and industrial growth that the infrastructure of activities that supports young families has been left in the dust. Each of these tightly packed suburban developments piles cookie-cutter homes on flat lots barren of trees and within spitting distance of each other. No sidewalks, greenspace, playgrounds…just lots of driveways.

Comparing Clarksville to other major or emerging cities across the country leaves the city in a less than favorable light in terms of crime, air quality, and traffic congestion.

Though this survey includes cities large and small, when I make my comments I’m not comparing Clarksville to the big metropolitans like New York City, Chicago or L.A. That’s an unfair contrast. Nor do I compare Clarksville with smaller towns that dot the landscape between the major urban centers across America. Clarksville is a mid-sized city on the grow. From my own experience and perspective, I simply look at what other cities of comparable size have to offer, and Clarksville comes up short. It has many wonderful features, but the scales have been tipped to the side of development profits and tax revenues rather than resources for the people who fuel those profits and revenues.

When the city settled on the “Top Spot” logo, which no one but city officials seem to like, they painted a bullseye over the city, making it ripe for just such comparisons. Without careful management, without an effort to maintain the delicate balance between the job/housing market and the amentities and infrastructure that enriches the lives of the people who live here,, Clarksville will never be Tennessee’s true “Top Spot.”

Signage. No kidding. Someone wants to talk about signs? It’s about time, though it is only a starting point. When the city refers to “blighted” areas, it refers to areas not meeting a maximized tax potential. Your property is worth much less in tax revenue as your home, and so much more (to the city and developers) as a revenue-generating business-zoned cadre of condo’s, apartments, another mini strip mall or as part of the growing Austin Peay State University campus.

In recent months we’ve heard talk of redevelopment, urban blight, and all manner of things relating to zoning and design. The fact is, when I consider what constitutes blight in Clarksville, it’s not just Emerald Hill or Red River or Brandon Hills or any of a half-dozens areas that may or may not be blighted in the usual sense of the word but which trigger dollar signs in the eyes of developers. To see blight, all I have to do is drive down Fort Campbell Boulevard or Wilma Rudolph Boulevard and look out the car window. Blight. One big wall of urban blight in the guise of revenue-producing business districts. The heck with aesthetics.

Face the fact: the view is UGLY.

Wilma Rudolph Boulevard, especially on its northern half, is a repulsive, just plain awful stretch of roadway, the poster child of development on steroids. Signs of every shape, size, height, and digitalized blinking technology (and I mean “blinking” as in “obnoxious digital flashing signs”). It’s a major distraction to drivers, a garish display more suited to early Las Vegas of the rat pack era. Tacky.

Riverside Drive

Before tackling the end plan and permitting that will shape and the future of the Madison Street/Hilldale area, take a drive (as a passenger) down Wilma Rudolph — either direction will do — and look ahead, a long way ahead. Up, down, over and beyond the car in front of you. You’ll see a landscape of utility poles scattered like pick-up-sticks, a tangle of wires and electrical towers, a no-rhyme-or- reason display of signage. Few if any berms (they are most noted on the southern stretch of Wilma Rudolph). Minimal greenspace. Absence of anything but token saplings. Acres of dealer lots and parking lots reflecting summer heat and glare, which when combined with an onslaught of traffic, exhaust and pavement are major factors that help push the seasonal heat index to unmanageable and even dangerous levels and create the stench of air pollution via auto-exhaust.

“Get out of Dodge…”

It doesn’t tempt me (nor my visiting friends) to try and stop or shop; it motivates me to “hit and run” those stores I absolutely need something from at the times least likely to create stress, then simply “get the heck out of Dodge” and go someplace cleaner, neater, less cluttered, more attractive, less tension-producing, and infinitely more user friendly. Someplace much less offensive to the eyes and ears. Someplace more conducive to peaceful shopping. Peak shopping periods of Black Friday and back-to-school tax-free weekends are the best reasons in the world to avoid both thruways and all stores. [Think of your absence from the melee as a mental health day.] Who needs the insanity of jockeying through the traffic and acres of parking lots in unattractive surroundings with all the excess vehicular traffic, noise and stress? Yet these highways have every day cycles that live like a Black Friday.

To relentlessly permit additional residential development in surrounding areas before adequate infrastructure — everything from fire and emergency service access, water and sewage issues, traffic flow, road improvements, community services and school space is implemented — is the height of folly. It is irresponsible. When studies indicate that planned road improvements to be completed 20 years down the road still won’t be enough to handle traffic, it’s time to step back, hit the brakes hard, and rethink the community as a whole.

Scan these thruways from side to side and you’ll find acres of box stores and strip malls that could benefit immensely by access or connector roads linking these plazas to each other without making the already horrific flow of traffic zig-zagging Pac-Man fashion to the main road, finessing the right- and left-turns to each individual store, mall or restaurant. But oh, wait, a few parking spaces might fall victim to such an “access” plan.

There are a few businesses like CDE, a few churches, St. Bethlehem School and a few medical offices that are low key and well groomed [read "attractive", "welcoming"], but on the whole it’s a case of “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” [Big Yellow Taxi/Joni Mitchell, 1970]

They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no, don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot

- Big Yellow Taxi — Joni Mitchell, 1970

Click here to view the embedded video.

The mess has been created, allowed to stagnate, and will not be easily modified. All the city can do at this point is target the newest areas of development (Hilldale, Madison Street, Riverside Drive, Emerald Hill, Red River, and start anew with the kind of carefully considered and thoughtfully implemented development that creates community without destroyed the history, heritage, culture and neighborhoods that are the very heart of a living, breathing city.

In so doing, planners need to keep in mind that community includes history, a mix of income levels, a mix of ethnicity, and myriad factors that breath life and create a hometown as well as a business district. Tearing down rather than refurbishing or historically recreating homes destroys identity, history and the good will of people. Not everything old needs to be replaced with something new. At the turn of the 20th century, cities were lined with brick blocks, four and five story walk-ups that after a hundred years decline. The cookie-cutter clusters of condos and apartments being built today are no different from a theoretical posit (though the old buildings were often better constructed). The well-built brownstones that have been revived in some cities are the most desirable of urban housing units, just as many of Clarksville’s small houses and cottages could be with the right revitalization plans.

Rethink mass transit

A lot of people travel by bus, including the elderly and disabled. Some of the city’s bus stops are ridiculously difficult to use. It is unconscionable that a place like Governor’s Square Mall welcomes anyone with money to spend but after it’s spent, shoppers traveling by bus stand by the curb (no shelter, no bench) to wait for the half-hour service. If it’s raining and one must wait inside, that bus can come and go before shoppers get out the door and make the sprint down the sidewalk. It doesn’t matter if bus stop facilities are the responsibility of the Transit Authority or not, the money-making mall should be paying attention to something that definitely affects one segment of its shopping base.

One of the nicest stretches of Fort Campbell Boulevard is the length on either side of Patriot’s Park. But head south and you hit a cacophony of pawn shops, a plethora of title and payday loan companies, more outrageous, garish and inconsistent signage, more power lines, parking lots and empty overgrown lots (some people consider that token greenspace). There’s a hideous and distracting neon orange shop (fireworks) that is far more annoying than amusing, resplendent in a hue that would be banned in most progressive forward-thinking communities.

In the eye of the beholder…

Clarksville keeps talking about its image, its position as a business “hotspot,” its role as a potential “destination.” It’s all well and good to cultivate big business and major employers, but those employers draw in and serve people, and people — the worker bees as well as the management bees — are the soul of the community.

Progressive cities that fuel the contentment level of their citizenry have things like walkways, bikeways, bike lanes on major streets, greenspace, meandering sidewalks, mini-parks, park becnhes, berms, crosswalks, comprehensive sheltered bus stops, expanded bus service including nights and Sundays, express point-to-point bus service, and “Park & Rides” for local commuters. As planners look to the post-Gateway development of the Madison Street area and that section of town residents want to retain as “Hilldale,” and as planners look to other development projects downtown and across the city, they would be wise to look at what environmentally conscious, earth-centered, people and culture friendly developers in other cities and states are doing and draw from the best of it.

The “Nowhere” books

In the books Home from Nowhere and The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler, the author examines the rise and fall of the American landscape — not the amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesty landscape but manmade landscapes. Kunstler addresses the form and function of everything from building codes and zoning to transit systems and roadways, correlating their design to the functioning of community. He tabulates the economic, social and spiritual costs paid on the altar of thoughtless design and places high rank on the value of sound design that integrates civic art and civic life with urban planning.

In 1993, John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight published Building Communities from the Inside Out, a workbook-style primer for planners that offers step-by-step strategies for recreating community based on an assessment of its assets (including human, cultural, ecological and economic). It’s based on the concept of finding local resources (individuals, small and large businesses, local philanthropists, civic leaders, cultural resources) and using them as the catalyst for development from the inside out. Maybe this text is too simplistic or non-mercenary for the current state of development in Clarksville, but it’s ideas have solid basis in fact and study, and should be used as well by organizations and individuals seeking to address specific issues.

Consider these suggestions:

• Place limits on signage (size, shape, number of, and the new blinking ones). Twenty foot high signage means nothing if such signs line a road every 25, 50, 75 or 100 feet. Signage is more than an issue of height. Signage is especially significant along the Riverfront Park, where people go for scenic beauty, not a potpourri of sign clutter.
• Consider banning oversized and blinking digital billboards outright (Vermont is virtually billboard free and more beautiful because of it; of course, Vermont also booted McDonald’s Golden Arches out of downtown too; locally, take a good look at Wilma Rudolph gas stations with ever-changing digital signage — take your eyes off the road to read any of them and you’ll be rear-ended or run off the road.
• Implement “transition” legislation on signage – if a company wants a new sign, the new sign must meet restrictions in the new code. Place limits on height as well as distance between signs. Require that all signs be replaced within a 10-year period to conform to the new restrictions.
• Develop “theme’d” signage for historic or specialty districts. (Example: Vintage signs for a revitalized railway station, historic marketplace or revitalized “Main Street” shopping district).
• Create incubator sites with shared services for fledgling businesses, entrepreneurs and artists. One refurbished factory can house two dozen working artists with studios, each “time sharing” a secretary, office services and business machines. Northampton, Holyoke and Easthampton, Massachusetts, each have turned vacated, otherwise emptied factories and old houses into booming art spaces that fuel tourism. MassMOCA in the Berskhires (MA) and the Arts District of Paducah, KY, both turned art into its own industry and source of economic development.
• Considering making a portion of Franklin street a Pedestrian Mall – no one wants to inhale exhaust while dining Al Fresco but as the city develops, a pedestrian mall could house a farmer’s and floral outdoor market in summer, street artists year round, outdoors cafes, and become an integrated activity center for the center of town. In Ottowa, Ontario, the pedestrian mall is eight blocks long and more than recoups its cost in business patronage and tourism despite five months of winter snow.
• Encourage development of local restaurants. The city is overflowing with chain restaurants, but the personal touch and local charm is never more evident than in places like The Gas Lantern in its Victorian setting, Silke’s with its art and homemade breads, Blondie’s with its outdoor garden and charming bistro, , or The Looking Glass — again with unique style, food and design. We need this kind of individualism in all price ranges from the mom and pop “best burger in the city” places to the upscale eateries and child-friendly restaurants.
• Encourage development of unique local businesses that offer something that most chain stores can’t match: personalized service and specialized products.
• Add a co-op or whole foods market to the local landscape.
• Integrate art and artistic projects into the community.
• Mandate berms, greenspace, landscaping and trees between business buildings and the roadway.
• Limit the size of parking lots with main road frontage and require a larger percentage of parking to be developed behind the large box stores.
• Develop access roads to link major malls and box stores without requiring customers to reenter the flow of traffic on main roads to access each new store on their itinerary.
• Require sidewalks in all developed areas including ALL new housing areas and commercial development (have you ever tried to board a bus from a grassy, littered roadside path?).
• Require crosswalks and pedestrian crossings (you know, those double white lines that run from curb to curb across traffic lanes?).
• Develop point-to-point or express and crosstown bus service (at peak times, if nothing else ) to link major points around the city without the “milk run” stop and go that currently marks every single route.
• Run buses at night and on Sunday. Period. No progressive city shuts down it’s bus runs at 8 p.m. and fails to run on Sunday.
• Create a uniform standard and design for bus stop shelters (currently not all stops have shelters or benches. Some are dark and modern, others old fashioned and resembling park benches, and still others a horrible gray steel that is bent, battered, graffiti’d and warped).
• Use the CTAS trolleys regularly for downtown transit, adding to the city’s historic flavor and, once the link between downtown and the riverfront is established, use trolleys to shuttle between downtown and the riverfront.
• Promote this expanded and express service as a commuter option to save on gas and ease traffic congestion.
• Create designated bike lanes with a link to the waterfront (a move that requires a complementary increase in police vigilance for speeding cars, and other traffic violations)