From the BCCT
Council backs plan to revitalize downtown
Forty-two percent of all residential properties in the borough are rentals.
By DANNY ADLER
A common theme in Morrisville’s new comprehensive plan is to revitalize the borough’s downtown and make it a focus of future economic development efforts.
The 156-page plan, which gained unanimous support from the borough council last week, also addresses housing issues in Morrisville, where 42 percent of all residential properties are rentals.
The plan was created by the borough and Bucks County planning commissions and serves as a policy guide to decisions regarding the town’s physical development. It makes dozens of recommendations.
“We’re trying to enhance the borough,” said council President Nancy Sherlock. However, she later added, the problem is that there isn’t a lot of room to build in Morrisville.
Councilwoman Jane Burger said many of the goals in the plan can be achieved “but not quickly.”
“All of these things probably won’t happen in 10 years, but we need to keep working toward that,” she said. “It’s a guideline. If you were doing a painting, I’d describe the comprehensive plan as the background. … It takes time.”
The plan says the borough can increase its tax base by attracting non-residential development. One such area to develop, the plan says, is south of Bridge Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Delaware Canal, which could serve as an extension to the downtown business district.
It also asks Morrisville officials to adopt form-based zoning that can control the design of the borough’s downtown. Form-based zoning codes, according to the Form-Based Codes Institute’s Web site, “address the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks,” with less of a focus on land use.
As far as housing is concerned, the plan recommends Morrisville look at sources of funding for housing rehabilitation and explore creating a program to turn duplexes and other rental conversions back to single family, owner-occupied housing.
Sherlock said the borough has been taking some steps to revert rentals back to owner occupancy; when a house sells, it reverts back to single-family home ownership.
So many rental units increase transience and absentee landlords who “only care about the rent check,” Burger said.
Some other recommendations in the plan: develop community greening and gardening programs; update the borough’s 1999 open space plan; market the borough as a historic and an affordable town; establish a shade tree commission; require all new developments to plant trees along streets; designate a historic district; work with the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission to implement solutions to congestion problems.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
“All of these things probably won’t happen in 10 years, but we need to keep working toward that,” [Burger] said.
"In fact, all of these things probably won't happen in a million years," she thought.
[Sherlock] later added, the problem is that there isn’t a lot of room to build in Morrisville.
And where there is room to build, we would like to keep that as open space to prevent progressive ideas from sprouting up.
The plan says the borough can increase its tax base by attracting non-residential development. One such area to develop, the plan says, is south of Bridge Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Delaware Canal, which could serve as an extension to the downtown business district.
I guess PennJersey Realty decided to develop on the wrong side of the tracks.
It took Michelangelo about 4 years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. All 5000 square feet, including background. And he was unfamiliar with painting frescoes.
"I guess PennJersey Realty decided to develop on the wrong side of the tracks."
They are all for development. Except when they're not.
The plan has many good ideas. Hopefully they do NOT take 10 years to implement.
The aforementioned "shade trees" were one of the first things about Morrisville to catch my eye. I particularly love it when PECO comes and cuts them into a big stupid Y.
The PECO tree sculpting -It's metaphorical. Like Greek ruins.
If anyone really believes these jokers (BC) are actually going to ever do anything except sit on their asses, say no, and act smug about it, they are living in a fantasy world. The only way anything ever gets done is when outsiders of this little cabal bring their energy and it finally overwhelms the negative entropy created by the BC suckitude. Penn Jersey is a great example. Meanwhile BC is still patting themselves on the back for a single LEHRTA (sp?) that in their minds passes for action. When has BC ever initiated a project or done anything to actually make positive change? They seem to believe that sitting around and waiting for some one else to step up to the plate is their charge. This attitude seems to have prevailed for years, just like some of these fossilized council persons. They've become calcified in their stubborn beliefs that doing nothing is always the best plan. Meanwhile the world passes the town by, and we are left in a post-industrial cliche. The list of great towns was such a perfect contrast to Morrisville. Morrisville has everything these towns have except real leadership.
What is this Wachovia thing that was placed in my mailbox? The enriching yadda yadda.....to come up with a neighborhood plan.
Meeting is for tomorrow night..anyone know?
Good stuff. A document like the Morrisville Comprehensive Plan (MCP) is only as good as the vision, leadership, talent, ability, and citizenry ("the Royal we") behind it. Which, as others have pointed out, isn't saying much right now.
Jane Burger just casually kicked the revitalization can down the newly poured sidewalk another 10+ years. Unless things really change around here, those sidewalks will need replacing again due to old age before any real revitalization comes to fruition.
Just like the U.S. Constitution, the MCP may also turn out to be a grand, honorable document in theory that in practice is prone to being abused, ignored, or downright trampled on. I hope not, but Morrisville politics, such as they are, make me extremely skeptical. I mean, haven't there been plans, surveys, surveys, and plans before? How have they turned out?
"It took Michelangelo about 4 years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel."
Good one. How about some more points of reference?
1.5 years to build the Empire State Building.
4.25 years for Dave Kunst to walk around the world.
3 years to build the Titanic.
4 years for WWII
8 years from the time Kennedy said we should go to the moon until it became reality
Number of symphonies Mozart composed by the age of ten: 5
4.25 years to build the Golden Gate Bridge
Approximately 10 years -- the time it took to create a working draft of the human genome.
The plan could be much simplified. A more honest and accurate plan would consist of one thing, "We have to wait and see."
Post a Comment