The current Brue Baukol Redtail Ridge proposal for almost 6 million square feet of buildings and parking lots at the StorageTek site is off the table.
Here’s what happened:
Having had two weeks since the August 4 meeting to read the room – and the approximately 800 letters council received in opposition to Redtail Ridge – Brue Baukol principle Geoff Baukol started Tuesday’s meeting by essentially conceding that Redtail Ridge as proposed was not going to happen.
Instead, “in response to public comments,” the developer announced a plan to decrease the size of the project from almost 6 million square feet to between 3 and 3.6 million of buildings. (He did not say anything about the parking lots, which are just under 1 million square feet in the current proposal.)
Baukol then asked the city council for guidance on drafting a revised plan, but as the city attorney pointed out, the only design proposal they could really address was the one the applicant had formally submitted – not a hypothetical one that hasn’t yet been created and submitted for review.
As council discussed the plan before them, it became clear that they’d heard our concerns about environmental sustainability, traffic, and impact on wildlife and that these would be important evaluation criteria in the next iteration of the Redtail proposal. Public comments reinforced these points and others, including the dubious future of office space, the problem of the site’s distance from the heart of town for residents there, the importance of respecting the city’s comprehensive plan, and the developer’s ethically questionable tactics during the application process.
In the end, instead of delivering a clear NO vote on the proposal as we’d hoped – a NO would start the process over again and allow for greater public involvement – council unanimously voted to remand it back to the city’s planning commission. We expect a revised proposal, with less density, to appear before planning within a few months. We’ll have to look at that carefully, ask our questions, and once again make sure our perspectives are heard.
We should all be proud of what we’ve accomplished: we stopped a deep-pocketed developer with serious connections and a high-powered lobbying firm by keeping ourselves informed, holding fast to our values, and speaking out. Amazing. Public participation makes all the difference. We’ll continue to keep you updated on the revised proposal so we can all remain actively engaged. In the meantime, let’s all enjoy a well-deserved break and the dog days of summer.
You can watch the video of the Tuesday, August 18, meeting here.
