To: East Side Neighbors
From: Northfield East Side Neighborhood Association (NESNA)
Re: Current East Side Issues
Date: August 28, 2010
As summer draws to a close, we wanted to advise you of recent NESNA activities.
First, we bring you the very good news that the City recently approved improvements for Memorial Park – including the creation of a system of paths similar to the one outlined in the 2004 master plan. For those of you who attended the session on Memorial Park at the NESNA annual meeting, you know that paths and accessibility were the top choices for park amenities. NESNA representatives have worked to represent this view with the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (PRAB) and the City Council, and we will continue to lobby for improvements in this important park space. In the meantime, don’t be shy about expressing your gratitude to members of PRAB and the Council!
Next, we want to bring your attention to work being done by the City Planning Commission, which has been charged with drafting a new Land Development Code (LDC) for the City of Northfield. The LDC is a kind of guiding document for building, planning, zoning, and use of property within the city. While the LDC is an extremely complicated document (nearly 300 pages in the current draft, available on the City website), NESNA has tried to follow issues that may be of special interest to its membership.
One such issue has to do with proposed changes to the CD-S zoning category – the category used for Carleton College. The changes have to do with what the College may and may not do when it constructs new buildings – especially when these buildings are close to the perimeter of the College’s zoning area (what is called the “Perimeter Transition Area” in the LDC). Why should NESNA members care about this? While the new code is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on what happens inside the current campus, it becomes more important if the College were to request expansion of the CD-S zone to the south. While the College does not have immediate plans to do so, such expansions have occurred over the past years, and it is reasonable to think that further requests for zoning changes will occur.
We think the definition of the “Perimeter Transition Area” may be an essential tool for maintaining the historic and neighborly qualities of the north side neighborhood. To this end, we are organizing an information and discussion session for concerned neighbors, which will be held on Sunday, September 26 (time and place to be announced). If you would like to learn more about the LDC, the PTA, the CD-S and other abbreviations that may affect you, please join us!
We thank Scott Carpenter and Lisa Ash for this information. Ed
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