John Myslak has written a letter to the Pensacola City Council regarding the 2012 recommendation by the Mayor’s Urban Redevelopment Advisory Committee that called for a form-based code system for planning and land development. The system would have created local neighborhood overlays that give residents and property owners more say in how their areas are developed.
Dear Council members:
As a former member of the Mayor’s Urban Redevelopment Advisory Committee I wanted to write in response to Monday night’s town hall that centered around the proposed project at Summit and Spanish Trail.
The URAC recommended to the Mayor that he support the adoption of a form based code system for planning and land development. While the recommendations were geared mostly to the downtown area, I firmly advocate for, and I suspect the entire committee would support, implementation of such a system city wide. I think that what we saw this week in reaction to a proposed development that was perceived as not “neighborhood appropriate” could have been headed off at the pass were a form based system in place. Once formed based code is in place, possibly with local neighborhood overlays, then the emotion and temperature could be reduced in many instances. Were this system in place currently the onus would have fallen to the developer to determine whether architectural standards for that neighborhood would have been beneficial to his brand. I suspect in this case the answer would have been negative, but if they chose to comply and build to a higher aesthetic standard, then welcome! Form based code systems do not mean “anti-develoment”.
I commend Councilman Spencer for presenting the concept for form based development to the City Council some time ago and I would hope that through your collective leadership it can one day become a reality. Thank you all for your service to our city.
Best regards,
John Myslak