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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSubmittal-Vacant Lots ArticlesDist 2 Blue Page Discussion Item scheduled for January loth, 2008 - Vacant Lots Commissioners to discuss the utilization of well located privately owned vacant lots for use visually as "green space". There are many privately owned vacant lots throughout the City. Many vacant lots are very visible because they are on very busy streets and very busy avenues. Many of these vacant lots do not look as attractive as they could. It appears a large percentage of these vacant lots will not get developed for at least 2-4 years, or more. Commissioners to discuss incentives to encourage the private owners to keep the lots maintained in a park like manner and the possibility of removing unsightly fences. Possible tax abatements, reduced assessed valuations and other incentives will be discussed. A mote beautiful greener City should result. On January loth, Commissioner Sarnoffwill present an Item on the Commission Agenda. He will be proposing the use of privately owned vacant lots for use "visually" as parks. We all know we have many vacant lots throughout the City. We have many vacant lots on busy avenues and many on busy streets. They are often very noticeable. e01ci' gU" p*ir54A pupas! U4a>Oe For obvious reasons we expect many of the lots to be vacant for many L J years. (Oversupply of condos, high construction costs, difficulty gettiti financing, high Real Estate Taxes, etc...) Co We all drive by vacant lots every day. We know we have at least 15 I -- vacant lots on Biscayne Blvd. We know we have vacant lots on Grand Avenue, we have vacant lots on S. Bayshore Drive, we have vacant lots In on NE 2'd Avenue, SW 32'd Avenue and on many other avenues and uJ streets throughout the City... Commissioner Sarnoff will propose that the City works with property owners and with the Code Enforcement Department to encourage () property owners to maintain lots in a "park like" manner. Imagine if every vacant lot in the City was maintained in a "park like" manner? Imagine if property owners removed any and all fences? Imagine if vacant lots were green and free of debris? Landscaped? When the City purchases property to add to our Park system it pays approximately $1 Mil per acre. Imagine if the City could visually add 25- 40 acres of park land? At little or no cost to the City? Imagine the vacant lots selling sooner or being developed sooner because the lots and the City look great? As your steward, Commissioner Sarnoff feels a responsibility to bring great ideas to the City. Great ideas that have little or no cost to the City... We ask for your help... ?-�084 '-;Sbmii1'a(Vac Jo LQlS E1'4icles necorn Seattle Neighborhood Builder Jim Diers Takes Improvement Project Around the World Washington, D.C. 05 June 2006 Beardsley report (MP3) - Download 1.5MB + Listen to Beardsley report (MP3) ao Beardsley report (Real) - Download 99k aU Listen to Beardsley report (Real) ev Citizen activist Jim Diers takes VOA reporter on a driving tour of Seattle neighborhoods Jim Diers is a former Seattle public official and citizen activist who found a way to help neighborhoods help themselves, becoming better places to live in the process. Now he is taking his innovative matching funds program to towns and cities across the United States and beyond. If Jim Diers needs to be reminded of his legacy as Seattle's Director of Neighborhoods, he has only to step outside his own door. By the early 1990s, his Columbia City neighborhood was run down and crime ridden. Shops, restaurants and grocery stores had left the historic area. But with support from Seattle's neighborhood matching fund, Columbia City residents joined forces to bring their community back to life. "The tore out the asphalt around the local elementary school and put in ," Diers recalls. They converted a Christian Science church into a cultural center and a museum, telling the history of that community. We started a farmers market on the site of the former supermarket, and now about 2500 people come on Wednesday night. And then when they're done they go to local restaurants, local retailers, so it's really helped revitalize those business districts. And that same thing is happening in different ways all over Seattle." SUBMITTED INTO THE PUB 'C ITCORD F ITEMD2,i C'Noi-jo, Bradner Gardens Park overlooking Seattle skyline The spark for many of those citywide projects came from the matching funds program that Jim Diers created after becoming the first director of Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods in 1988. Whether they are defined by their scenery, their ethnic make-up or their political leanings, neighborhoods had long been a way of life in Seattle, a source of local pride and civic activism. But they had also become a source of discontent over the years, with complaints that the city government favored costly downtown projects over more modest neighborhood programs. A longtime local activist himself, Jim Diers devised a plan in which the city would provide matching funds for whatever neighborhoods were willing to invest in a project. "We decided to make an eligible match from citizens not just cash," Diers explains, "but it could be volunteer labor or donated goods and services, so every community would have access to this. And what was really exciting about that program was not just that we completed so many neighborhood self help projects, and projects that are incredibly innovative, but the way in which it built community, that it involved tens of thousands of new people who had not been involved in their communities previously or with their city government." Neighborhood ties are important to Jim Diers, who moved to Seattle in 1976 after graduating from college. Getting involved in civic causes helped Diers find the same kind of community he'd enjoyed growing up in the Midwestern state of Iowa, and taught him valuable lessons about getting other people involved as well. "I learned the importance of thinking big, but starting small, that when you bring people together they need to have a sense they accomplish something," Diers says. "So you don't start by working on world peace. You maybe start on a dangerous intersection and hopefully move people towards world peace and social justice. A key organizing concept is never do for people what they can do for themselves." Jim Diers pauses to admire the plants in Bradner Gardens in one Seattle neighborhood Sometimes even Jim Diers was surprised by the results. When Seattle's Fremont neighborhood announced plans to place a giant sculpture of a troll beneath a bridge, on a site overrun with weeds and litter, Diers was dubious. So was a local newspaper art critic, who wrote a scathing column. "The community got so angry about this column they started rallying around the troll," Diers recalls. "Kids wrote a troll rap. They started doing street dances to raise funds for the troll, and it's been such a spectacular success. It brings people from all over the world to Fremont, helps with economic development. On Halloween they call it Trolloween, and hundreds of people go up and howl at the troll. Everything happens on that troll." Submitted into the pubNc record in conneollon with item Priscilla A. Thompson C! Cleric The Neighborhood Matching Fund has supported some 3000 projects around Seattle over the years from an Eritrean immigrant cultural center to a wheelchair accessible pla round to oral history programs, tree plantings, environmental cleanups and Jim Diers and VOA's Nancy Beardsley visit a produce stand in Seattle's Columbia City Farmer's Market Stroll through Columbia City's Farmer's Market on a Wednesday afternoon, and you will meet young people like Kevin, who sells organic produce for the Seattle Youth Garden Works. "The thing I like about this job is I learn how to give to people in the neighborhood and people in need/' Kevin explains, "and I think that is one of our main goals for growing produce, is to give organic food without chemicals." Or you will meet people like Mikala Woodward, who helped renovate a park after moving to Seattle from Los Angeles. She says she didn't grow up with a strong sense of community roots. "And I've been so impressed with how people in this neighborhood are very rooted. I fell in love with it, and wanted to make sure I would stay and my kids would feel rooted here." The Neighborhood Matching Fund is still inspiring improvement projects in Seattle, but Jim Diers has a different job. He was terminated when a new mayor took office in 2001, and he now acts as a liaison to Seattle communities for the University of Washington Office of Partnerships. He has written a book about his experiences called Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way. And he has used a $100,000 "innovations award" from the Ford Foundation to help other communities launch matching fund programs. "We now have over 100 cities that have similar programs," Diers says. "It works in small towns. It works in big cities. It works in the United States. There are programs in South Africa, both in Port Elizabeth but also in rural townships. They have a Neighborhood Matching Fund in Kobe, Japan. It's a strategy that works everywhere." When he travels to other communities that have used that strategy, Jim Diers feels right at home. He sees new community centers, , parks -- and in Taipei, a group of artificial goats standing on a hillside -- a reminder of that once controversial Fremont troll. It is all a testimony to what can happen, Diers says, when city governments not only give citizens a voice in their communities, but empower them to bring about change. Submitted into the -public record in connection with item Dz, I on O 1-10 " c Priscilla A. Thompson City Clerk Miami eyes vacant sites for park use BY RISA POLANSKV In a city low on green space but lately flush with vacatprivateland as developers wait out the residen- tial real estate slump, one Miami commissioner is suggesting empty low be maintained as parks. "We figure There's over 30 acres of potential park space on Biscayne Boulevard" alone, Marc Sarnoff said. To convince landowners to jump aboard "we'd have to give them a carrot," he said —poten- tially tax reductions in hopes they'd pay for needs such as upkeep and insurance. Reductions could be "dollar for dollar" the first year, he said, noting a tax rebate would probably need Miami -Dade County's approval. City commissioners have yet to discuss the idea — they de- ferred the topic at a meeting last month — so details are scarce. Mr. Sarnoff said he envisions "passive parks" with amenities such as benches or sandboxes. "What's in it for the city is green space, beautiful green space, as opposed to cyclone fences filled with trash," he said. The incentives could flesh out any 'lumber of ways and it could end up that the city's parks department maintains the land, Mr. Sarnoff said. The city doesn't impose insur- ance requirements on vacant lot owners, Victoria Mendez. assis- tant city attorney, wrote in an e- mail to Mr. Sarnotf and staffers. She also said there's no re- quirement to fence vacant lots. l..egal issues such as liability would need to be ironed out, said Judith Burke, a partner with Shuns & Bowen who special- izes in real estate, land use and zoning, but "I don't think there's any thingthat necessarily couldn't be done to protect both the city and the property owner." Though still in its early stages, the concept would "allow people to create open space when we don't have the funding." Mr. Sarnoff said. His office reports that the city pays up to $1 million per acre for parkland. SUBMITTED INTO THE PUBLIC, f',,..),ECORD FOR ITEM 0