Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

DOES IT HAVE TEETH? Directly from the UDO: The Franklin City Civic Center District guidelines

Shoppes at Wyndham Village occupies, at developer Mark Carstensen's explicit request, an area re-zoned as "Franklin City Civic Center." Simply put, he could not go forward with the development without the re-zoning, and he couldn't get the re-zoning unless he argued effectively that his site plan would conform to the City Civic Center requirements.

Why do I believe the Franklin Plan Staff is so sharp? Because they wrote these requirements for the Franklin City Civic Center District, which I simply copied-and-pasted from the City of Franklin Unified Development Ordinance, page 3-38:

SECTION 15-3.0307 CC CITY CIVIC CENTER DISTRICT

A. District Intent. The CC District is intended to:

1. Serve as the new "downtown" of the City of Franklin.

2. Be used in that area of the City designated on the City of Franklin Comprehensive Master Plan as the Civic Center Planning District.

3. Promote mixed-use development which may also include cultural and institutional facilities, indoor entertainment facilities, business uses, multi-family residential uses (to a lesser extent), and those other uses which would contribute to the CC District's role as the "heart" of the City of Franklin while also accommodating uses which are under public or public-related ownership, or which serve a quasi-public purpose.

4. Foster a pedestrian-oriented City of Franklin Civic Center even though the CC District has off-street parking requirements.

5. Foster a scale of development that is people-oriented rather than automobile-oriented. The spaces formed in this area, through careful site planning and urban design, are to cater to the pedestrian rather than the automobile.

6. Employ superior building, site, and landscape design standards than most other areas of the City since the uses in the CC District will convey the image of all of the City of Franklin to both residents and visitors. Building design within the CC District shall follow the City's design guidelines established especially for buildings located within the CC District.

7. Require a larger landscape surface ratio (LSR) and lesser floor area ratio (FAR) requirement than are typical of other business and institutional districts of the City since much of the area designated within the CC District has existing woodland and wetland cover.

While the character of the highly pedestrianized portions of the CC District would be URBAN in character, the various requirements of the CC District are established to increase its compatibility with a SUBURBAN character through the preservation of open space and natural resource features characteristic of the CC District as set forth in the City of Franklin Comprehensive Master Plan.

Sounds very nice, right? Unfortunately, the current site plan for "Shoppes" ignores a great many of the guidelines above. And if this project is allowed to skate, notice is given that the Franklin UDO - of which city officials are so proud - has no teeth.

If you're attending the meeting tonight, print out a copy of this list and see if it's addressed.

Plan Commission Meeting: 7pm Tonight

The Plan Commission meeting tonight (7pm at the Franklin Taj Mahal Law Enforcement Center) has the Shoppes at Wyndham Village on the agenda - hence the bigger venue.

How the meeting plays out will be very revealing. How many people will the Carstensen organization bring to speak in support of his development, no matter what form it's in? Many would be my guess.

Will the public have an opportunity to speak? That's in Mayor Taylor's hands, according to the rules.

How many times will the word "berm" be used?

How demanding will the Plan Commission membership be in terms of asking the hard questions and  making sure the right choices are made? Will it be anything like the line of inquiry at the Shoppes at Legend Creek meeting? (For instance, Alderman Steve Olson at the Legend Creek meeting - - not a member of the commission, but tossing in his 2 cents nonetheless: "We're looking for something that is unique to Franklin. If there's a store that already exists in Franklin, we don't need another one." Will he pursue that logic tonight with a redundant Sendik's on the docket?)

One Plan Commission member has already months ago sent a letter of support for the project to a state agency on Milwaukee County letterhead; he didn't even need to see a site plan. Will he simply wink at Mr. Carstensen when "Shoppes" comes up before the commission?

There is an entire contingent of folks with legitimate environmental concerns about the site plan (concerns shared by the DNR). Will they be heard?

Does Target exert so much influence as anchor that Mr. Carstensen is simply unable to make changes to the site plan to better conform to city civic center district guidelines?

In that case, whose guidelines win out - Target's or Franklin's?

This is why they invented Tivo - - watch that The Office rerun tomorrow and watch something really intriguing tonight.

Beware the media

A friend of mine all the way down in Georgia alerted me to the fact that my name was mentioned on local right wing radio host Mark Belling's show in relationship to the Shoppes at Wyndham Village (he listens to the podcast).

I can't blame Belling for mispronouncing my name, but it was truly painful to have my opinion mischaracterized as "antidevelopment." He read my quote from the May 3rd Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story on the Shoppes project:

"We need a town center desperately."

Belling took this to mean that I think we need a Town Center, ala Bayshore, rather than what I really meant and said to the reporter: "I'd like to see this succeed and be done carefully because Franklin needs an area of commercial and public focus - a town center." My quote was truncated; my own fault for not feeding sound bites.

What was interesting when I listened further was Belling's insistence that the residents of Franklin were "snobs" and feel "too good for a Target." The essence of his argument was that in a "tax hell" like Franklin, you should be happy with anything that comes your way. (He, of course, included the common "solution" that childless people feel is viable: "MOVE AWAY!")

And, finally, Belling labored under the delusion that the project was temporarily pulled because of citizen concerns. The truth as I know it is that some DNR permitting issues had to be worked out: This thing is already a done deal as far as I can see.

I can't speak for others who have voiced concerns about the Shoppes at Wyndham Village, but my opinion is that a commercial development in that location could be extremely good for the city - I'm not against a well-done development. HOWEVER, a municipality can and should resist the temptation to grasp at whatever development in whatever form is proffered without careful consideration of how best to implement it - - make it more lucrative to the developer and more useful to the community. Shoppes at Wyndham Village could be the start of something really big if done right, but just another strip mall if done unimaginatively.

As it is, it is very unimaginative. Almost spookily so. Yet certain city officials are ready to rubber-stamp it and light a celebratory cigar.

I see in the Franklin Plan Staff some very, very sharp professionals whose input should be heeded and supported with laser-like focus by the Plan Commission and Common Council. Too often their comments, supported by the city's Unified Development Ordinance, are regarded as "suggestions" and shrugged off - - even in direct correspondence from the developer to the city in response to plan staff site plan comments.

More later ...

 

[This entry amended in response to a comment from Franklinnow.com blogger Greg Kowalski, who believed I appeared a bit too accommodating in the previous version of this post]

"Suburb" does not equal "Sprawl"

Local right wing columnist Patrick McIlheran gets his wires a bit crossed when it comes to what sprawl really and truly is ("Sprawl had the middle class living like lords"). So I dropped him a line:

(Public Contrition: I forwarded this to a friend - with a cc to McIlheran - and referred to "more McIlheran tripe" [as I am generally on the other side of the opinions he expresses in his column]. That was fairly uncalled for and I take it back. What's become of civil discourse nowadays?)

Hello Patrick,

I read your column with great interest today because I agree with the spirit of your headline if not the semantics.

Suburbs are not inherently "bad." In fact, I think suburbs can and should be excellent places to live - - they certainly were in the days when your in-laws' neighborhood was laid out. While there may be people out there (urbanists?) who characterize even the carefully planned and designed communities built in the 40s through the 60s (and even into the 70s) as "sprawl," I'm not one of them.

I'm with you: Suburbs were a boon to the middle class. I grew up in a wonderland. Walked to the drug store to buy comics, biked to the pool, spent long afternoons playing ball at the local diamond, skipped stones in the Wisconsin River, etc.

The old drug store is still there, but they don't sell comics anymore. They don't sell much of anything anymore, actually. The "local" Wal-Mart and Walgreen's get most of the prescription drug business now.

With that said: The bucolic environment you describe in your column is most assuredly not "sprawl" as we know it today. Your in-laws live in a post-Garden City commuter suburb that was built in a more thoughtful time, laid out to serve a community complete with amenities that modern developers don't bother with. You describe the ideal to which many anti-sprawl folks aspire!

But they don't build 'em like that anymore.

For one thing, the taxpayer revolt you regularly celebrate (spreading outward from Proposition 13) put an abrupt end to the developers' practice of creating parks, retention ponds and green spaces in the subdivisions they built. They would typically deed these crucial community amenities back to the municipalities, but local governments could no longer support them post-Prop 13; now they simply don't build them. To add insult to injury, a recent change to the way developers pay impact fees (they now pay for lots SOLD, not lots BUILT) means local municipalities are cutting back even further on community amenities. Whereas developers used to build neighborhoods and communities (as they did in the days that your in-laws' neighborhood was built), they now simply plop down groupings of houses on wide, curvy streets - no sidewalks - connected to a single over-burdened collector road.

You describe the sort of suburb that is disappearing: A walkable neighborhood, access to a commuter train(!), situated in a traditional street grid that creates the "inner" feel, old-growth trees planted a half-century ago by forward-thinking developers, etc. By all means, lets have MORE of those.

The modern reality, however, is sprawl. Subdivision "pods" are situated just off noisy collector roads (traffic-dispersing street grids are passe). Roads within subdivisions are built wide and curvy for maximum speed and noise (kids and other pedestrians be damned). Sidewalks? You must be joking. Parks and public spaces are an afterthought if included at all (every ball game means parents have to drive their kids to the diamond). The elderly, once they can no longer drive, are trapped in their homes or independent living facilities and no longer interact with younger people; young people must rely on mom and dad's car to get anywhere, and when they turn 16 are almost routinely given a car to drive (you are well aware of the tragic statistics for these new drivers).

Furthermore, arbitrarily scattered subdivisions here, there and everywhere make locating commercial development problematic (no one wants Target or Wal-Mart traffic further plugging their single-access collector road) so property taxes skyrocket. Consequently, suburbs eventually end up desperate, taking whatever commercial development is offered without careful integration into the existing community (ask the developer to take time to create a commercial site plan that works with the surrounding infrastructure and community and you are "anti-development"). Formerly public spaces where people used to linger and interact (and learn empathy and tolerance) while running errands and "getting things done" are now single-use entities flung out on the fringes, surrounded by huge seas of asphalt.

They sell comic books here. Sometimes.

You describe "a leafy, unattainably ritzy district" that your in-laws observed long ago with envy; happy ending - -  hard work and the American Dream prevailed and they attained the same conditions eventually when they moved into their present neighborhood. How can you miss the irony of later describing your in-laws current suburban wonderland as something "I know I could never afford"? That would make it for you pretty much a "a leafy, unattainably ritzy district"; however, the American Dream circa 2007 evidently limits your choices to farther out in the exurbs, where you'll find vehicle-centric pod-subdivisions with big back yards, impressive square footage and little else.

We have to do better than that.

Long live the suburb -

John Michlig

(McIlheran's column is in the extended)

Shoppes at Wyndham Village issues: "Walkability"

Click the image below, which is the Shoppes at Wyndham Village "Pedestrian Access Plan," for a larger image.

I've traced in RED the Pedestrian Routes indicated on the site map submission. The YELLOW line indicates a line labeled on the plan as "Proposed Public Sidewalk" - - presumably, either the city pays to put it there, or there will be no walkway available.

What is it we're talking about when we say that Franklin City Center zoning guidelines - - to which Mr. Carstensen agreed to adhere when getting this land re-zoned to allow for this project - - call for building groupings that are pedestrian-friendly?

From an "intra-development" standpoint (i.e. how things are arranged within the site plan, as opposed to how the site relates to its surroundings), the City Center guidelines are rather specific in stating that the zone should be "slightly more urban" than the surrounding suburb in terms of buildings allowed to be closer together. It also states that, whenever possible, parking should be behind the buildings rather than out front.

This allows:

• a clean, attractive facing of building facades out front (which is visible to Drexel AND the neighborhood beyond),
• a noise screen that acts as a barrier between the neighborhood across the street and slamming car doors, and
• a desirable, enclosed courtyard effect behind.

It also means pedestrians can move among the buildings without traversing "parking plains." This can most certainly be accomplished while maintaining the same amount of parking.

On this plan, we see that a single structure, BUILDING 7, adheres to the "parking behind" guideline.

Note the pedestrian relationship between BUILDING 4 and BUILDING 7 - - there is none. Once again, the suburban curse: "when nearby is still far away." A direct route between BUILDING 5 and 6? None.

Note the strip mall-like expanse of unimpeded asphalt between BUILDINGS 5, 6 and 7 and the TARGET/SENDIK'S location - - it almost appears as though two different developers are building on the site, and those two developers don't talk to each other.

One has to wonder if this strip mall standardization is locked-in because of the influence Target exerts as the site's anchor. Does Target demand a huge expanse of unbroken space in front of its stores? Perhaps Carstensen's site planners are not lacking in imagination, but rather are constrained by the ironclad "guidelines" of Target.

A question for the Plan Commission meeting this Thursday at 7pm, held at the Franklin Law Enforcement Center, undoubtedly.

The City of Franklin website is still down, by the way ...

Shoppes at Wyndham Village: The New Plan

Posted below (click to enlarge) is the latest Shoppes at Wyndham Village site plan as submitted to the City of Franklin on May 16th. The previous plan (in color) is below it for comparison's sake.

Still a standard, vehicle-centric strip mall, unfortunately.

Shoppes will be on the agenda for this Thursday's (5/31) Plan Commission meeting. As of tonight (Monday, May 28) the City of Franklin's website is down, so I can't tell you what time it's scheduled for or where it will be held.

UPDATE (Tuesday, May 29): City of Franklin site still down.

"Once you look at it closely, the SMART idea is actually something different: Small Minds Against Rail Transit"

Excellent post from James Rowen's Political Environment blog:

Another Policy Dud From Scott Walker

Scott Walker, the Milwaukee County Executive famous for cutting the bus system, has come up with another bad idea:

Stripping out the trolley component of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's bus/rail transit upgrade - - the key element there being the rail loop aimed mainly at the downtown - - for an all-bus expansion to help the suburbs.

The Walker plan also deletes Barrett's proposed express bus extension to Mitchell Airport, indicating Walker's disinterest in the "multi-modal" linking together of various forms of transportation.

Not to mention his shrug of the shoulders at assisting the airport - - a County-run facility.

Walker's plan meets at least three of his pet political priorities:

• Win praise from his shills in right wing talk radio, where anti-rail foamers lead the retrograde movement in southeastern Wisconsin keeping Milwaukee a second-tier, under-competing city.

• Appear to support transit expansion, using federal funds he had nothing to do with winning for Milwaukee, for new bus routes to please his suburban base.

• Be the anti-Barrett.

This is something Walker grafted on to his standard operating procedure after former Mayor John Norquist left office in 2004.

As a former Norquist staffer, I observed Walker's negativity towards Milwaukee, ranging from his opposition to programs as varied as the Milwaukee Connector to consolidation of duplicated, taxpayer-paid plant nurseries.

Express buses might be nice - - until they get caught in traffic and remind riders that a bus is a bus is a bus - - but urban trains are new, and hip.

Modern US cities are building several varieties of light rail and trolley systems, even in cities like Dallas, where there are more right wing talk show hosts per capita (or is it per square mile?) than in Milwaukee, Norquist joked.

Urban rail has come to Denver, Baltimore, San Diego, Portland, even to Kenosha, but Walker and his talk show allies are keeping Milwaukee a rail-free zone.

And rail-bashing by some AM talkers keeps the conservative, suburban base stirred up, on edge, fearing the easier movement of city residents across the region's borders.

Or as the late George Watts called them at a 1997 forum in Milwaukee - - "strangers" who'd ride the rails to menace the suburbs.

Walker says his plan is to be called SMART, for Suburban and Milwaukee Advanced Rapid Transit (actually SAMART, but let's not quibble).

Once you look at it closely, the SMART idea from Walker is actually something different: Small Minds Against Rail Transit.

Trouble at Fountains of Franklin Sendik's? UPDATE: Not really...

Even as the "Andy's" sign goes up across the street and earth-moving machines begin their work on the Sendik's site, there's this enigmatic news item on the Franklinnow.com web site:

The Franklin Common Council Monday tabled a resolution for a development agreement for Sendik's at Fountains of Franklin at South 51st Street and Rawson Avenue.

Even though the agreement was put on hold, work can begin on the the infrastructure of the store.

In a community where TWO Sendik's stores are competing to see who gets built first, this is very, very interesting. More after I listen to tapes of the meeting and see specifically what issues were raised - - and, more importantly, who raised them ...

UPDATE: Based on my interpretation of what I heard on the meeting tape, the resolution is tabled merely to iron out issues related to median landscaping and responsibility for the retention pond. No big deal - one wonders why Franklinnow.com didn't report a bit more on the relative non-issue rather than post such a provocative fragment.

Parental hubris and sprawl-induced isolation create monster market for monster playsets

Nonexistent neighborhood parks mean kids and parents need not risk actual social interaction with other kids and parents on public swing sets and monkey bars - - for 5K or so, we can further heighten our isolation.

But what choice do suburbanites have? Kids have to have a place to play, and developers can't be bothered anymore to provide accessible amenities of any kind, much less a community playground (and recent new developer-friendly laws only make the situation worse). And, of course, you have to get a bigger and better playset than the folks down the road; these things are statements to many people.

I've heard the grumbling of parents who spend the big bucks for gigantic, extravagant personal playsets that are in open view of adjoining backyards, complaining that other kids  - - their own kids' friends - - are using the thing for nothing. Time to build a fence.

A positive note in the story: The past year has been tough for playset sales. This can only be a good sign (why buy one of these monsters when you have a community park in walking distance?).

Photo/Jim Bovin/ for the Journal Sentinel

Play sets get pricey

Parents paying thousands for tots  to romp on high-end jungle gyms

By DORIS HAJEWSKI
[email protected]

Ava Budecki is a little kid, but her outdoor play set is a monster. A Rainbow Monster 2, to be exact, which set her parents back about $5,000.

Little Ava, age 2, is part of a generation of children who are swinging large.

When their parents were kids, they were happy with a couple of swings and maybe a glider, hanging from a metal crossbeam. Now that those Generation Xers are doing the shopping, they are finding that the sky's the limit for play sets - in size and in price.

Today's play sets come with rock walls, rope ladders, sandboxes and tunnel slides. Some have towers with roofs and rotating plastic guns mounted on their walls.

"I sold one in Michigan for $12,000," said Henry Ruff, general manager of SugarIsland Play Systems in Sun Prairie. It was the most expensive one he's seen go out the door since he started there in 1989. "I never thought I'd sell anything like that."

Even so, it's far from the top of what affluent parents are shelling out for high-end play sets.

Rainbow Play Systems' King Kong Carl McKee Custom, the ultimate in luxury from the Brookings, S.D., company, has a footprint as big as a house: 46 feet by 58 feet, with towers that top out at 16 feet. The Carl McKee includes a 37.5-square-foot castle fort; two 73-square-foot multilevel clubhouse forts; and a 25-square-foot King Kong penthouse.

The set uses 4,828 board feet of lumber, weighs over 5 tons and costs $39,768. Installation is another $6,156.

Who would spend that much? A member of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team bought one, said Tim Steffens, who sells the sets at the Rainbow store in Pewaukee.

But Ruff and others say the five-figure sales are few and far between. And to tell the truth, it's been a tough year for play set sales, according to area retailers.

For the 12 months ended in February, American consumers spent $183 million on outdoor play equipment, according to the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y., research firm. That represents an 18% decrease in dollar volume and a 20% decrease in units sold, according to David Riley, a spokesman for NPD.

"The economy and the slowing housing market have definitely had an effect on it," said Rick Buss, owner of Amerigym Corp. in Waukesha, which makes Merry Time play sets.

Springtime sales rush

The situation has only made competition among makers of play sets more intense, particularly in the spring, which is the equivalent of the holiday shopping season for the play set industry.

"A whole year of sales happen in three months," Buss said. "It's just a feeding frenzy."

The typical buyer for play sets is a couple whose first child has turned 2 and who have - or are expecting - a baby. Often, families buy an outdoor play set when they buy a home.

Parents have a wide range of choices, including basic, assemble-it-yourself sets at mass retailers such as Wal-Mart and Kmart and the mid-range at Toys "R" Us, home improvement chains and Sam's Club.

Five Wisconsin companies make play sets: Merry Time of Waukesha; Swing-N-Slide and Playstar, both of Janesville; Outback Play Centers Inc., the parent company for SugarIsland, in Sun Prairie; and Active Adventure Play Systems in Two Rivers.

All of them are duking it out on the showroom floor, where parents hear about the merits of wood and component materials; types of hardware; safety issues; and price.

Laurie Norman, a Whitefish Bay mother of two, said she and her husband considered Rainbow but ended up with an Active Adventure set for $2,100.

The do-it-yourself sets that Rainbow now offers compete with similar products sold at home improvement chains and Toys "R" Us. These sets are typically made of lighter weight wood beams and can be purchased for under $1,000. They appeal to people who are willing to do the work to assemble them.

Cost a big issue

Heather and Brian Festerling of Pewaukee tried to find a used set online, and they shopped at the places that deliver and assemble sets and at Toys "R" Us before buying one at Sam's Club for $1,100.

They hauled it home in their truck and are putting it together themselves.

The Festerlings are as happy with their choice as the Budeckis, who chose to spend more and get more service. The majority of shoppers are going the do-it-yourself route, manufacturers say, because of the price.

"It was tough to stomach," Todd Budecki said of the $5,000 cost of the Rainbow Monster 2. But he said he and his wife were sold on the quality of the Rainbow set.

Buyers of the bigger sets can recoup some of their investment by reselling them when their children outgrow them. Retailers who sold the original will move and set them up, for a fee.

Steffens, the Rainbow salesman, says price is the biggest stumbling block, despite Rainbow's status as the big gorilla of the play set industry.

"We fight price competition," he said. Rainbow's weapons in that battle are quality and service, including a home visit by a salesperson who will assess the site and make recommendations.

And so, as the selling season for play sets heads toward its last big month, the war goes on.

Even in an industry based on child's play, it's a jungle out there.

The myth: "The market wants sprawl."

Sprawl is not propelled simply by market forces. The land development and home building business sectors would have us believe they are simply responding to the public demand for housing in general and suburban homes in particular. They lie. The housing market is remarkable because supply influences demand much more than demand affects supply. What this means is that although there is a huge fraction of Americans who do not want to live in suburban sprawl un-places, they have little choice in the market. These people want to live in true communities that are walkable, loaded with parks and other greenspaces near their homes, and where they can greatly reduce their car use.

- Joel Hirschhorn, Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money