Marcus Theater is now in the running for the 2009 DashPipe award: http://www.silurian.org/dot/dashpipe/
-- ===== darin ---- Eric Sundquist <[email protected]> wrote: > As a Plan Commission member, I got a couple of e-mails on the Marcus Theater > project following today's Cap Times story, so I thought I'd post my thoughts. > > I voted against the rezoning, along with one other Plan Commission member, > Beth Whittaker. I think the proposal is lacking in several respects, not > directly related to the bike path bridge -- the Cap Times article overstates > that issue, I think, since there are bike paths and lanes throughout the > project that connect in a decent way to surrounding facilities. Here are my > objections: > > 1. This is an area envisioned for transit oriented development in the comp > plan and is right next to the Northeast Neighborhoods, which the city hopes > to develop as with low car dependence. > 2. However, the developer made no real effort to work with Metro to provide > transit. On-demand shuttles buses to the nearest scheduled stop would be a > low-budget item, and would benefit the low-paid, part-time workers the > theater/bowling alley/restaurant will employ, as well as some patrons, and > would lessen the need for the acres of free parking Marcus envisions. > 3. The parking lot exceeds Madison zoning minimums by several hundred spots, > in what is supposed to be TOD. > 4. The theater and parking will go in before the "main street" part, which > was the New Urbanist appeal for some. There's not guarantee that main street > will ever be built, and even if it is, it's a pretty weak New Urbanist > approach, but more of a prettyfied strip mall. The whole thing represents > only a slight improvement from the off-the-shelf 1970s style of > auto-dominated developement. > > Assuming council goes along with the rezoning -- a safe bet given that the > alders on the commission and two others who weighed in from the audience were > in favor -- we will have another crack at the project when Marcus seeks > approval for its specific design. I will push them again on the > parking/transit issue, but I wasn't getting much traction on that last night. > It would be great to have some folks show up and reinforce the message. This > will probably be in about a month. Marcus wants to open by the end of 2009. > > Eric _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
