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LAND USE COMMITTEE MEETING POSTPONED UNTIL NOVEMBER 28TH AT 7:00 P.M AT THE TOM SYKES CENTER.
WALGREENS - CITY COUNCIL TO VOTE ON MONDAY:
LAST CHANCE! This Monday 11/26 IS the Walgreens vote.
City Council will vote and render the final decision in 3 days....this Monday, November 26th. The meeting is at 6:30PM NOT AT 4 PM!
We knew one Council member might be absent from the meeting on the 12th thus deferring the vote to the November 26th City Council Meeting. And that's exactly what happened. Thank you so much to those of you who attended the meeting. We showed City Council that Dilworth is still united in our opposition, which was important since Council members are being told that many residents do not care, and it is just a few in opposition.
We have not received any indication that the vote may be deferred on Monday, and it is our expectation that it WILL occur Monday night. Here's what you can do:
- Come to the City Council meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, November 26th, and bring friends! We need a visible presence to evidence the neighborhood's continued, united opposition. The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. in the Meeting Chamber on the 1st floor of the Government Center located at 600 E. 4th Street. Free parking is available in the adjacent parking deck across Davidson Street (between 3rd and 4th Streets)
- Write all of the City Council members---again. Even better, call them!!! In our meetings with Council members over the last few weeks, we frequently heard "we need to hear from the residents". This is your chance! Click on this link for all of the contact information you need.
Let Council know what concerns you most! And be sure to tell them you're a Dilworth resident. Here are some points you might make:
- The adopted Midtown Morehead Cherry Area Plan includes the words "some retail to serve the immediate population also may be appropriate" and these few words are now the Petitioner's rationale for approving Walgreens. These words were never included in any draft of the Plan reviewed by Dilworth representatives involved in the Plan's development process, and no one with the City can now explain how those words became part of the Plan. Retail use is not shown as an approved use on the maps that accompany the Plan, in complete contradiction to this text. And the stakeholders who developed the Plan have agreed that retail at this location was never intended. Let Council know that a Walgreens at this location is not consistent with the draft of the Midtown Morehead Cherry Plan approved by the stakeholders, and the revisions to the approved draft bring the integrity of the entire City area planning process into question.
The Plan also recommends, and City Council in fact adopted, a "pedestrian overlay district" for development in the Morehead area. Drive-thru windows for retail are explicitly prohibited in such district and yet staff supports the petitioner's proposed drive thru. This petition cannot be adopted except by ignoring the just adopted standards of the pedestrian overlay district. Let Council know that a drive thru at this location is an affront to all the planning that has been done for this area, and that the noise and traffic congestion associated with a drive thru is completely unacceptable at this location.
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