Many ideas were thrown out to a crowd of about 800 people at the Community Leader’s Breakfast in Decatur regarding Lake Decatur’s lakefront development plans. If you would like to listen to the entire presentation, it can be heard on WSOY’s podcast. (The podcasts are usually updated by the afternoon.) The lakefront discussion is during the 8:00am hour. I haven’t had a chance to hear all of it yet myself.
A website has also been launched for the project at www.decaturslakefront.com. The first public meetings schedule is posted.
Video of the event can be found here: http://herald-review.com/app/multimedia/clb/#vmix_media_id=10361553
Just a reminder: tonight is the first community visioning session. (March 1st) It will be at 6pm at the Scovill Golf Course Banquet Center. 3909 W. Main St. I’m hoping to make it out there to see some of the ideas. Not sure if my schedule is going to allow for it but I’m going to try to get there.
I didn’t get a chance to make it to the first session but it looks like Decaturites aren’t loving the residential development suggestion for Nelson Park. No surprise there. I hope I can make it to the next session and look over the ideas.
Dang it – I missed both of these and I am so into this. I over slept for the community breakfast – I NEVER oversleep but I did that day. And Monday I was sicker than a dog. I just could not go. So disappointed cause I really appreciate they want the community input and love to give input and this is a real important issue to me. Dang – do they have any other meetings coming up? I’ll check the website and send in a survey but nothing like the actual meeting….
The next meeting is:
Design Charrette 1
March 29 – 31
Time & Location TBA
I’m going to have to Google “Charrette”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the word. I wanted to go to Monday night’s session too but my daughter has after-school activities on Mondays, so that day doesn’t work out so well for me. I don’t want to fill out the survey either until I see what ideas are out there. Hope I can go next time. I’ve only been writing about this stuff for the past two years!
b.t.w. A charrette (pronounced [shuh-ret], often Anglicized to charette and sometimes called a design charrette) consists of an intense period of design activity. (Source Wikipedia) I was pronouncing it Char-ette.
Ok thanks for the info. I will try to go to that one.
I did go to the meeting and found it a nice experience over all. They had photos of things which could go in the park and suggestions, from the surveys, on large sheets of paper. As you said residential housing was unpopular and shouldn’t be in the middle of park anyway. The Design Charrette, as I was told, will involve 5 or 6 designs with ideas which the public was in favor of. The public can then vote for which designs or elements of a particular design they like. There will be one with residential housing on it, regardless of the fact it was absolutely rejected as an option. So, you may like everything in the design but not the housing shown on it. Supposedly you can show you are opposed to the housing but OK the rest. Who knows how that works, maybe you OK the rest and they say you OK’d all of it.
I’m looking forward to seeing the plans on paper. There’s a lot of cool things that could be done down there, however I agree with the majority, that residential is not one of them.
I’d love to see a 9-hole golf course, botanical garden, water park (new pool, wave pool, etc.), amphitheater, boardwalks with nice shops/restaurants. I wouldn’t be opposed to a lodge/hotel. I’m not sure what the pedestrian bridge is about. Maybe I’ve got it wrong but were they considering connecting Nelson Park to Scovill Zoo with a bridge? If so, that would be one heck of a bridge. It would be cool and certainly unique but I would imagine costly to build.
I looked on their website and I didn’t see any PDF’s of the different plans. I’m going to send a suggestion that they put those up on the site. When I went through the high school task force process, looking at all those plans was kind of overwhelming to digest and make a decision in a few minutes time. I’d like to look them over and ponder my response.
They did mention a possibility of a foot bridge over the lake since walking 36 isn’t real safe. There was talk of a shuttle boat going between Nelson and the zoo/museum, and the design plans are suppose to be on their site eventually.
You might want to listen to a podcast on WSOY 030310, Wednesday, very end of the 6 am show and most of the 7 am show. One thing said was 8 out of 10 people there was from the Nelson Park Group – there was probably around 15. The paper said around 100 people came, I am not the best in math but 15 isn’t 8 out of 10 of 100 people, like was said on WSOY. The only thing I know they are against is residential housing, they are open to the things you mentioned. Residential housing would involve the public losing control of park land.
A shuttle boat would probably be more realistic, and during special events, could be a nice attraction. I wouldn’t want to walk across the 36 bridge either. That wouldn’t be too appealing to anyone.
I’ll listen to the podcast. Thanks for all the information!
Listened to the podcast. Liberal Sue! LOL. Sue, you’re the best part of Byers’ show. You should be his sidekick. That would be fun!
I totally disagree with Brian on the Target deal but I’ve been down that road before. I agree on some points on the lakefront development and other things, but he brought up a lot of issues that I want to address, and I’ll do that in another article.
Can’t wait to read your article.
One of these days, I’ll get to that article! This week I’ve been busy, busy, busy (next week looks the same) but I’m sure I’ll get my two cents in somewhere down the line.
That is me – don’t why it lost my name…