Mis-Visions in New Berlin

It is apparent, even before MSP's proposal, that the City Center wasn't working out exactly as envisioned by New Berlin residents.  But was that vision accurate?  Or rather, the memory of that vision?  Jane Ford-Stewart explores that vision in NewBerlinNow.

Overall, it was a fair, even charitable, article that digs at the misperceptions about the City Center and where they may have come from.

What I found interesting was that it refutes some claims by opponents.  More specifically:

1) Opponents claim that City Center was always intended to be luxury condos & that the workforce housing is incompatible with that vision.

While many officials believe the vision calls for specialty shops and high-end condos, neither concept was formalized into the City Center Plan or into the city's 2020 Comprehensive Plan, said Carolyn Esswein, a consultant who was the project manager on the comprehensive plan.


Further, she pointed out that not only condominiums but townhouses and apartments already have been built in the center. Apartments are allowed under the center's zoning, Esswein said.

2) Claims that there is too much density are dubious in light of the fact that the land is zoned for exactly that.

The 180-unit project strikes some officials as being too dense for the City Center, but the zoning calls for medium to high density of residential development, Esswein said.

3) This is a new one for me, but Alderman Ament claimed that his recollection was of a rural character:

In the upcoming Plan Commission review, Ament strongly advocates creating an identity for the center, which was a goal of the 1999 plan. The city needs to be able to set the City Center apart from other commercial areas, he said.


His own recollection of discussions about the original plan is that the centers was to have a rural character or feel to it, he said.

I'm simply staggered by this.  This may be true (I wasn't there), but it's hard for me to imagine how realistic a rural character would be given the level of traffic around the City Center on National, Moorland & Sunnyslope.

As I noted in a previous post, the plans do call for changes to be made should market conditions change.  People have said the land should simply languish until the economy changes.  I'm doubt the same people saying that would be supportive of compensating the owners of such properties for the loss of development potential.