Apple Valley Property Owners Association

Connie's PDF documents are linked here.

Please scroll down to FRONTGATE Outerloop Apartment Info to view documents named:

FRONTGATE Development Plan and FRONTGATE Planning and Design Document

http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/Apple_Valley/pages

June 21, 2012

Follow-up from 

Bill Bardenwerper

Bardenwerper Talbott & Roberts, PLLC

Home Builders Association of Louisville Building, Second Floor

1000 N. Hurstbourne Parkway

Louisville, Kentucky 40223

502-426-6688 (W)

LDG's Frontgate Apartments proposal on Outer Loop; meeting with neighbors

DEAR JON: Many thanks for writing and inviting us. We’d be happy to join you, as we told people when we organized and voluntarily held a meeting with hundreds of neighbors in January 2010 on a proposed apartment community at this site.  We said then, we will meet “til the cows come home” if people want, in an effort to negotiate the points we could and, of course, to try to raise folks’ levels of comfort that this apartment community is a place where friends and relatives will actually live, not undesirables as people so often unjustly fear based on bad things they see elsewhere, for reasons not applicable to what is proposed here. For your further information, at that time, we were dealing with developers who proposed market rate rental housing, and we asked the pretty feisty crowd that met with us at the old WalMart (by then called New Vision Ministry Center) on Outer Loop to not run those developers off, because I had no idea what might follow. But that didn’t stop people from making those developer’s lives pretty miserable, and so they eventually dropped their proposal and departed the scene.  Since then dozens of apartment developers have considered this site, but LDG is the first to come forward with a nice looking design and viable financing plan.  The layout and density that LDG just filed with the Division of Planning and Design Services is pretty much the same as before. So, other than the developer who has changed, an apartment plan for this site is nothing new to people. It was shown before and has been discussed for a long time by people far and wide. Councilman Peden has surely kept it on his front burner. 

That said, it looks from our calendars that  7pm on July 16^th or 11 am on Saturday the 21^st work for our team.  So please let us know if either of these days and times still work for you and your Apple Valley neighbors.

In advance thereof, I will try to move the design team along to the point that perhaps they can send you something in advance that could help allay some concerns about apartments, and especially about affordable ones. 

Just as a point of reference, and I know this from 30 years in this business of handling by now thousands of different development projects in every corner of Metro Louisville:  the two most important ingredients that go into stable housing communities are quality of construction and quality of management. This is especially true of apartment communities. LDG has a good track record. And when even affordable housing communities are built and managed well, as we all want them to be because we all live in communities we want to remain safe and stable, they pretty much always turn out fine.  In that regard, as Mayor of Hurstbourne for 9 years, a position probably not much different than yours and one which I always told my family was that of “glorified complaint-taker”, I think I heard from nearly every homeowner by the time I left office about some neighbor doing or not doing something the other believed  offensive. We have two apartment complexes in Hurstbourne; and yet in 9 years, over the course of 216 City Council mtgs and several thousand calls and letters, I never received one single solitary complaint about these apartments. You know why?  Because they were well built and well managed. And unlike my neighbors whose grass is full of weeds and whose garage door is falling down, which I can’t do a thing about, the apartment managers can evict bad actors who make apartment life difficult for others. And why wouldn’t they if they want to keep occupancies high? One of those Hurstbourne apartment communities is a Section 8, and always has been. Yet even the people living in very nice homes across the street from it don’t know that, which is because it looks nice and is maintained and managed so well.

All that said, we are willing to meet and in doing so hope that everyone comes open minded about what LDG proposes, why it proposes what it does, and what LDG can show and assure to help you and your neighbors understand that this is not what they think and why it just may be something not bad at all but rather quite nice as we maintain it will be.  Until we meet, please feel free to call or write me any time. Best wishes, Bill B

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Mr. Bardenwerper:

Thank you for accepting our invitation.  We (the residents of Apple Valley, Cedar Creek, City of Hollow Creek, City of Spring Mill, Crimson Lake, Glencoe, Goins Manor, Highview Acres, Penn Pines, Quindero Run and Stovall Place) look forward to meeting with you. 

I am glad you are willing to "meet 'til the cows come home' if people want, in an effort to negotiate the points we could and, of course, to try to raise folks' levels of comfort..."  Such meetings in the future will be very beneficial for us all to engage before the Category 3 Review process is concluded.  Our first meeting can be on Monday, July 16th at 7:00pm. 

I am a bit discomforted (though I appreciate your candor in the first paragraph) that you imply that the current LDG proposal (which has sought tax credits) is thus less desireable than the previous proposal ("market rate rental housing").  I am also concerned that in the time since the previous "feisty crowd" meeting, there has been a lack of effort on your part to meet 'til the cows come home' with Councilman Peden and the leaders of the neighborhood associations in order to negotiate what can and should be a win-win solution.  Instead, it appears that this current proposal, thus far, has been intentionally pushed forward without consideration of the past concerns raised by area residents and over the current objections of Councilman Peden and others (once we have become aware of this new effort).  Let's work together to make up for this lost time and opportunity so we can find a win-win solution.  

We hope everyone comes open minded about (and willing to address) the various, legitimate concerns of the citizens of this community.

We look forward to our first meeting on Monday, July 16th at 7:00pm at the Government Center at 7201 Outer Loop. 

Thank you,

Jon Bingham

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Jon: We have calendared the date.

One reason so much time has passed since our last mtg is because there hasn’t been another good proposal until now. Once LDG got this property under contract, it wanted to wait to see if it received a preliminary commitment of tax credits before it wasted anyone’s time showing a plan that otherwise might not go forward.  Further because we held the mtg that wasn’t even required but was well-attended, and because, ever since, this site has been on everyone’s radar screen as we intended from that mtg, it wasn’t as though people wouldn’t know about this and have their opportunity to publicly comment in accordance with the Land Development Code’s established legal procedures for notice and hearing.  We just recently filed the LDG plan. It is undergoing agency review prior to docketing for Planning Commission DRC Committee consideration as part of its ministerial Category 3 review procedures.

Finally, as to your observation below about my distinction between this and the prior distributed plan, the previous developer did say that it intended what we call “market rate” apartment housing. Because everyone always seems to run into a buzz saw of controversy whenever and wherever they propose apartment-style housing, it’s not that I favor one over the other or that I think one type is more important than the other, but some neighbors sometimes view this distinction as important to them, whatever their reasons. In this case, it was obvious from our last mtg that hardly a soul, if anyone, gave the prior developer any credit for proposing market rate as opposed to affordable apartment housing.  I mentioned it because we said back then that a future apartment developer, if the last one dropped out, could not be guaranteed to propose the same design or rental rates, whether that mattered to anyone or not.  That’s all.

I may have more to say in another email about the article you have been distributing.  Until then, continued best wishes, BB

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Mr. Bardenwerper:

Thank you for your confirmation and further clarifications.

As you refer below, I would welcome further email correspondence from you regarding the incredibly significant LDG "quality of management" problems in Indianapolis as indicated in the following links:

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn's website post:  http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news?ContentRecord_id=E877509B-802A-23AD-4700-F039E9E4B40E  based on Indy.com news:   http://www.indy.com/posts/apartments-told-to-repay-809-000-in-rent-subsidies

rtv6 news:  http://www.theindychannel.com/news/22594302/detail.html

Indy.com news:  http://www.indy.com/posts/107877

Thank you,

Jon Bingham

Does anyone know if and or when there will an other meeting discussing this? I live in this area, but also work for a TV station, and I am sure we would like to get the word out if possible.

Thanks

Jason

Jason,

If you havent already, please contact Jon Bingham via email (email located on the contact tab of this website) to discuss the lastest and possibly getting more media coverage. Thank you so much!