The Oak Hill neighborhood planning committee has invited Karl Kehde for the evening of Tuesday, Feb 22.

This committee meeting every two week (2nd and 4th tuesdays) to work on a neighborhood master plan for Oak Hill and SW austin. (roughly everything between Southwest Parkway and Loop 45 and from Brodie Lane out to Circle Drive on Hwy 290.

The meetings are open to the public and especially to the business owners in the Oak Hill area.

The next meeting will be held at the Oak Hill Church located on Hwy 71 opposite the Sherwin-Williams paint store. You can also come in from Old Bee Caves road, which runs along the other side of Williamson Creek.


karl is an experienced neighborhood planner, who has devoted most of his career to negotiating development agreements that preserve the local culture and socio-ecconomic environment. He understands the business needs and the community values, and in our case, the treat of a ghost town that the new TxDOT highway project could bring to the Y.

It's not hard to look back at the ecconomic disaster that major road development has cost Austin along Ben White (Hwy 290) and Research Blvd (Hwy 183). Vast stretches of elevated highways have made faster by-passes for customers who can no longer easily stop and shop in stores they were all familiar with. Then, many of those shopping centers were abandoned. New stores that were only built in the early 1990's are now empty and only the smallest businesss have been able to survive on the tickle of local shoppers left in theie own backyards. And good paying jobs disappeared along with the department stores, supermarkets, and even care dealerships.

I love good highways as much as anyone, but I also think there is a way to build them without choking off the locals stores we all treasure and use every week. Come help us map out a different plan that won't leave Oak Hill looking like a Ghost Town.

Karl Kehde

Our guest speaker happens to be staying in Austin over the need couple of months. He has written a book called SMARTER LAND USE, howe to Enhance Proposed Projects to get better neighborhoods, Less Sprawl, and Fewer Lawsuits.

http://www.landuse.org


The book he's brought with him, is designed like a workbook - it's easy to read and use as a guide. He also included some video presentations on a CD that is includes. I'm happy to share my copy, too.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karl Kehde personally designed, developed, and marketed three major residentcial reas estate projects. He built solar homes and donated conservation easements. He served eight years on his town planning board and five years on an advisory committee working on new Jersy's State Development Plan. Beginning in 1989 he received philanthrompic funding from several foundations plus the New jersey Department of Community Affairs to do this research. For the past twelve years he has participated in more than 500 staekholder meetings in 48 proposed land development projects in New York, New Jersey, pennsylvania, Flordia, and the state of Washington to create these procedures for improving neighborhoods and ending sprawl.



NOTE: In his breif presenation at the February OHAN meeting, Karl pointed out that the secret to preserving a culutural entity is to identify it's socio-ecconomic roots. Once that is identified clearly, it become the goal of both the neighborhoods and the developers.

In our case, TxDOT has become the developer that is threating our Oak Hill commercial community. If we just sit back and let them pave over the Y, what we will end up with is a Ghost Town. There is no reason to expect anything more, because ''they just build the roads''.

Instead, we can insist on having a voice in the design before they break ground (due in about 6 months), suggesting some variations to their mega plan that not only might be less expensive, but would actually enhance the traffic mess we have at ground level, while leaving lanes for thru traffic to pass by the Y.

The secret is to make sure that none us of who want to do business in the Y are disadvantaged by their project. More than just dealing with the dust and the detours, this project can be done in a way that actually makes the Y a bigger, busier, more profitable commercial success.

IT CAN HAPPEN, but only if we can get the businss owners and local residents to join our project. There is still time, but very little time.

TxDOT will probably have to hold one more public Town Hall Meeting in Oak Hill, and when that happens, we need to have a well thought out alternative to their quick and dirty concrete via-duct solution.

Meeting Tonight

The meeting with Karl is tonight. Future meetings will be held on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month and the location will change from time to time.

We have met in ACC a number of times and may do so again, but it's important to vary the location from time to time. We are very anxious to include business owners or reps from the larger corporations in Oak Hill, as well as neighbors, commercial drivers, and anyone who frequents the Y area or highways passing through Oak Hill.

The City of Austin sends a staff member from the Planning and Zoning department and they also provide maps and charts, as needed.