Honorable Mayor and Council,

The appeal of this humble project appears to be an effort to make a political statement about parking downtown. At the planning commission hearing there was one statement about an internal parking problem that was an owner/tenant issue and was not related to public streets; no increase in building traffic has been identified, nor proposed.

This 84 square foot technical "addition" (no new useable space but actually a reduction of 400 square feet in usable space) results solely from the effort to make the 2-story building handicap accessible by adding an elevator. To claim that this deviously enables unapproved high-traffic medical uses, which remain clearly unapproved in a very visible building, is disingenuous at best. Shall we not allow any elevators in non-medical buildings?

The use-based parking guidelines were not invented spontaneously but were adopted based on the majority of area municipal guidelines, as any local planner can attest. To fail to apply the office parking ratio for the second floor FAR would be an odd and unfounded discrimination.

1010 Doyle provides needed small upstairs office spaces in the heart of downtown. The owner is making it more attractive and more accessible. It would be an embarrassment to all of us if our City could not support this applicant, and this project became the tool of a purely political statement.

Henry Riggs
Callie Lane Received on Sun May 4 23:31:45 2008