Safe Routes to Indian Hills

This post was delayed at request of Moscow Attorney Randy Fife and Community Development Director Bill Belknap until the rezone and PUD process had run their course. The development passed P&Z and Council.

I went to two meetings on April 23, a presentation by Safe Routes to School, a joint UI/Moscow grant that is working on education and programming for school children and opinion gathering among parents regarding non-motorized ways of getting to school. The lion's portion of the grant is being used to build sidewalks in several areas near the JrHi that will make travel to the school, Eagan, and the pool safer. We got here because of a series of, probably small, choices years ago that let developments take place that didn't provide sidewalks. Now Safe Routes is looking at how development has unfolded, where public facilities have located, and seeing routes that seem unsafe or undesirable for walking. And that has become more important as we've come to recognize child obesity and diabetes might be linked, in part, to changes in exercise. Not only is walking probably good for kids, at $4/gallon for diesel it could be good for the District bus budget if we could reduce the number of bus routes, and could be good for our collective carbon footprint if we quite driving kids to school. From many angles, Safe Routes seems like a good thing.

Then I went to the P&Z hearing on Indian Hills 8th addition, a proposal to create a 20 acre R4 zone on Palouse River Drive behind Columbia Tractor. I voted against both the rezone and the preliminary plat for reasons I'll outline.

The Comp Plan sets out the area as Medium Density Residential, which suggests a zoning up to R3. R4 allows higher densities , but the topography of the site was said to preclude achieving those densities. For reasons I still don't understand, staff recommended the R4 classification as the developer requested. R4 is stated in the zoning code to be appropriate for areas near the University and central to the city. Given the site is just over a mile from the UI admin building, and a mile (as you could walk along the abandoned part of Main) from 6th & Main, it does not seem to meet either criteria.

In addition to the items above, which seem to belie the intent of the R-4 zone, the zoning of adjacent parcels is a key consideration in zoning a new parcel -- so one could expect to see requests for more R-4 going east on Palouse River Drive, an action that, I think, would be less likely by having zoned Indian Hills 8th to R-3.

Finally, the safe routes issue. I foresee the same problem that arose at Peterson Dr and Hwy 8 near TriState happening at Styner and Hwy 95. A poor intersection with increasing pressure from pedestrians attempting to walk to the University. That is a second reason I find high density zoning in Indian Hills 8th unwarranted.

As for my vote against the preliminary plat. The proposal created a single 14 acre block, and another large block. Large blocks without pedestrian rights of way across them are antithetical to pedestrian uses, which therefore promotes automobile use. I regret that I missed seeing, and arguing for, a pedestrian ROW from Indian Hills at its extreme western turn around down to the Myrtle St ROW. That could have offered a pedestrian route where the alternative is presently very long.

Moscow Climate Change

Back in Feb 2007, as part of the Moscow Cool Cities series of events, I was asked to serve on a panel addressing community design issues impacting climate change. Here is the PowerPoint I developed for that presentation. The key point is that we are making structural design decisions, like giant parking lots and roads that are pedestrian unfriendly and will get in the way of moving to a less auto-intensive society. The piece is dated with references to events in local politics. (I need to learn to make these into voice overs because there is often quite a bit of the message only in the audio track.)

Bicycle City

Bicycle City describes itself as "a planned community where people live, work and play. Its eco-friendly, car-free design is healthy, sustainable and animal-friendly." So far, Bicycle City does not exist, its a vision shopping for a location. The site lists places in Idaho as potential existing cities to host this innovation, alas, the descriptions of Moscow seem to have been done by somebody at their dining room table in Manhattan -- there is no sense the person knew the local area or even worked very hard with the Moscow website.

Nonetheless, I filled out the form and suggested that Moscow was an interesting site to consider because of the Legacy Crossing redevelopment downtown and the already developing bicycle culture and path system.

Water and the Urban Forest

Nichole Baker, the City's water conservation staffer, pointed me to this item (short PDF) from the Panhandle Lakes Resource Conservation and Development Council:

In the first attempt of its kind in Idaho, IDL (in cooperation with local governments) has applied for a grant from the US Forest Service to develop and implement a GIS analysis, using CityGreen software and high-resolution satellite imagery of tree canopy to address stormwater mitigation and water conservation and quality in both developed and rapidly developing areas of Kootenai County, Idaho, an area of approximately 100 square miles.

And Bill Belknap reports that Moscow's Tree Commission is "working on a similar study and model for the City of Moscow. The have a group of Americorps volunteers that will be working on updating the City’s TreeWorks GIS public tree inventory system and then integrating it with the CityGreen to model and quantify the environmental and economic benefits of the urban/community forest. It appears that they may have their findings back in time to incorporate within the Comprehensive Plan revision."

Being a fan of the urban forest for its beautiful lumber and the trees for their carbon sequestration value, I'm interested to hear that serious effort is going into understanding their role in watershed management. I hope this information moves forward fast enough to provide guidance to the new comprehensive planning effort.

Water and Legacy Crossing URA Project

Wed (4-9) saw a presentation by the Moscow Urban Renewal Agency of the Legacy Crossing Project at P&Z. Gary Reidner laid out the ways in which the Project was generally consistent with the 1999 Comprehensive Plan. You can see the URA materials here.

What troubled me about the document was there was no mention of water conservation as a infrastructure or utility issue that the URA would include in its goals. This post puts my concern in context.

Consequently, here are my notes on the motion passed unanimously relative to the URA request:

We find the URA proposal generally consistent with the Comprehensive Plan, contingent on the URA bringing back to P&Z for approval the following modifications to the URA plan:
1. addition of a new section that addresses the URA’s infrastructural strategies to conserve municipal potable water.
2. inclusion of Hogg Creek as a waterway to be preserved/ enhanced
3. inclusion of enhanced emphasis on multi-modal transportation infrastructure (rights of way, facilities, etc) as a goal of the URA

And we request that Staff draft the appropriate reasoned statement for our review.

My Rationale: A project of this scale cannot fit under the PBAC cap. Given that the URA mechanism funds infrastructure related activities that are for municipal benefit I would like to see in their proposal for infrastructure development by the project structural approaches to water conservation (this would give project activities a municipal benefit in addition to econonmic development).

I don’t want to suggest either a mechanism the URA would choose or an amount of conservation the URA would target, I’d rather they come back with a proposal and convince P&Z of the merits and feasibility of their idea.

I was instructed at the last P&Z meeting by my fellow Commissioners that water conservation could not be taken out on the back of a single developer. I understand that, but if we do not plan for, and make, infrastructural changes impacting water use, the difficulty of conserving is greater. The URA is a great opportunity to make a public-private partnership to steward our resources.

I think P&Z's planning responsibility is to look at these infrastructural issues and plan for long term strategies to impact the city’s efficiency (water, energy, garbage). I'm looking for suggestions.

Council can look at policy mechanisms like price or rationing irrigation to meet specific goals within the constraints that the infrastructure imposes.

Legacy Crossing and PBAC Cap

Back in March I posted about a small annexation going through P&Z and the water budget questions it raised. Joel Hamilton commented with a resource from the Army Corps looking at ways to divert surface water for municipal needs of Moscow and Pullman.

At the Feb 27 P&Z meeting, Nels Reece and students showed this Legacy Crossing Conceptual Model. (See the model at City Hall, very cool.) April 12 the Legacy Crossing URA redevelopment plan will be the subject of a public hearing at P&Z. (Public notice as PDF). Nels' students' project addressed only the southern portion of the URL, south of 6th, and going SW to Hwy 95. They were assigned to see how much housing density the could create as part of a mixed use development in the area. The handout they had is part of the Feb 27 P&Z Minutes. It describes fitting 650 dwellings (6.5million sqft) on the ~20 acre site.

I've been reading the PBAC 2006 annual report (PDF) (PBAC home) which has these two graphs on the historic water pumping by Moscow. (Graphs for other entities are in the report as well).


This is the pumping rate (blue) compared to the agreed PBAC rising cap. Only recently have we gotten our conservation efforts in line with our pledge.

In addition to the 1% rate of increase pledge, we have also pledged to stay below an absolute cap of 875 million gallons.


This graph shows our actual pumping (bars) compared to the 875 ceiling (line). This difference is the 30-50 million gallon "headroom" that Bill Belknap described in the March 26 P&Z minutes. The available headroom in Moscow's pledge for 2006 was 875-856 = 19 million gallons.

Here is the problem. The Council committed 2% of our total pumping allowance to Hawkins (and 111% of the available headroom). There was a furor (for multiple reasons). Nels Reece's students' ideas for just part of Legacy Crossing would commit 8% of our pumping allowance, see table below and 363% of the headroom.

Project	use	gal/yr	acre ft	% headroom	% of ceiling
Moscow Ceiling (125% baseline)	all uses	875,000,000	2685	-	-
Moscow 2006 pumping	all uses	856,000,000	2627	-	-
Moscow Headroom	all uses	19,000,000	58	-	-
Hawkins	Potable	14,663,295	45	77%	2%
Hawkins	Irrigation	6,517,020	20	34%	1%
Hawkins	all uses	21,180,315	65	111%	2%
Macrch 27 1 ac rezone	all uses (1 dwelling estimated)	106,000	0.3	1%	0%
Legacy Crossing	all uses (650 units estimated)	68,900,000	211	363%	8%

Legacy Crossing Conceptual Model

There is a beautiful model under the stairs on 1st floor of City Hall. It was done by students in Nels Reece's class.

These are the notes from the draft 2-27-08 P&Z meeting minutes on the model:

Nels Reece distributed flyers to the attendees and introduced Christa Shell, one of his students assisting in the project. He made the presentation of the model of the Urban Renewal District model. The railroad was a divider in the past but the land is now being considered in a different manner. Nels Reece’s U of I class evaluated the land to determine if a purpose could be developed. Landscape architecture and architecture students built the model at about 1/16 scale.

Christa stated that the students that built the model were fourth year students and the design intent was to maintain and bolster the unique character of Moscow and yet reflect the sustainable nature of the City and the University. They also wished to encourage the use of pedestrian and bike ways here in this presentation. Reece oriented those in attendance by pointing out the different landscaped models.

The extension of Main Street is strong, remembering that it is important to exploit those elements that are current.

The red ribbons represent the extension from the Hello Walk, which could be a 40 or 50 foot wide public right of way. The street could become a 60 feet wide public right of way, as well.

Its worth looking at the model and seeing which of its ideas resonate with your visions for how central Moscow might develop. Its also worth looking at the model for the kind of opportunity it represents for Moscow as compared to the lack of a similar opportunity in downtown Pullman. It is an example of the kind of significant difference between the two communities which are so similar in many other ways.