Council - public_hearing

Talk to you a little bit about what we've been up to so far, what we've, you know, kind of the different things that we've done up to this point. Then we're going to do a little Q&A, and then we're going to put you to work at the back with some maps that you'll understand more in a minute. But, yeah, here we go. Too far away. He said, why are the chairs so far back? I said, because I'm going to stand up here instead of back here. But let's see if I'm on this other room. All right. So as Cale was saying, we don't want it to just be my plan. So at a minimum, even if you all don't participate, I've got a whole team of people who are going to be working on this plan as well. So economists and transportation engineers and people who understand infrastructure and all of that. And so we will be looking at all the different aspects of the city as a part of this effort. Anna, can you do me a favor and be the changer so I don't have to stand back there and be lonely? this is like the bermuda triangle in here last one time we had a weird thing with the microphone and matt and i had to like make contact with each other to make the mic work and now my clicker this is mine this is not y'all's so um next please so uh here's the schedule um we were kind of uh looks like about halfway through we started off with a meeting in january public meeting um kind of Did these a little bit thematically with the different wards? So we would set up our home base and each of the different wards as we go and then we do presentations here So we had a first meeting and then we started thinking about our scenario planning which we'll talk more about in a minute we had our second ward meeting in May and we started working on and coming up with some goals and some vision statements as well. And then here we are currently, this is our Ward 3 trip, and so this is our sort of visioning discussion through this process. Then, hold on, sorry, Anna. Coming after this, we'll do what we're calling our community vision show and tell. And so we're actually going to be working on some different planning concepts, some sketches, some different areas around city that you guys have been directing us to to to look at to illustrate some of the ideas um that you all have been saying are important to you so that you can have something tangible to say like oh that that actually seems like a really neat idea really neat way to implement the you know this concept uh or oh that's you know that seems not homewood enough right because we want to make sure that we keep your identity through this process so Then we'll be working on a the first draft. We'll have the staff review it Make sure we haven't done anything goofy in there and then we'll send out the public draft and you all have a chance to review it Comment on it give feedback on the actual draft of the the comprehensive plan book And then we'll take that feedback and we'll start working on the final plan Move that forward and then you'll be ready to go through the adoption process next.

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So we started off by sitting down with all the different departments and staff saying, hey, what's kind of from your perspective, from the municipal perspective, what's going on in the city? What do you need help with? What's good? What's bad? We did a tour. So we got to go all around. For those who haven't met me until tonight, I'm originally from Vestavia. And so my aunt lived just a few streets over there. But I was a kid, not a professional, when I was kind of roaming around Homewood. And so we had to look at it with new eyes. So we got a great tour. Then we interviewed all the different elected and appointed officials to say, hey, how are things going? What are your constituents saying? Tell us about some of the common things you're seeing at a planning commission hearing or whatever. And then we also started digging in deeply to understand the existing regulations and ordinances and all of that.

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So we had our community ideas exchange. We had a workshop-based event, and everybody was very interactive, and people came and got to do all sorts of fun things with that.

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And we had our growth choice workshop. And so you'll see some of the results of that reflected in this work. And so there we were asking people like, hey, we've been running some different scenarios of how you could grow, where you could grow, how much you could grow. And people gave us feedback on three different different sort of varieties of growth, right? So we call them scenarios. And then sort of looking at what people liked, we've said it's not one or the other. And so picking different ideas from them that were reflected in the future. Next. So a few major themes have come up through the process. So protecting Homewood's charm, something that everybody is really focused on, and rightly so. Grow intentionally. So rather than just letting growth happen and development happen, or you grow one development at a time and whatever comes out the other end is what you get, being a bit more proactive in how you approach growth. Provide diverse and compatible housing. We've heard that you have an affordability issue with housing at all levels. You have a shortage of housing. And so how can we start to find ways to work towards fixing that? as best you can in a desirable, really great community. So the next thing we are looking at is fostering connections. And so those connections can be thought of in a bunch of different ways. It can be physical connections with roads and bikeways and sidewalks and building on all the great infrastructure of that type that you already have. And then also social connections and finding ways for people to interact more. building a multimodal network. So we're going to talk several slides tonight about transportation, multimodal transportation, that is, not just people getting around in cars, which is often the focus these days. People are like, okay, well, we all drive places. That's the predominant way we get around. But one of our stations in our workshop showed us that people would actually like to get around a number of ways, not just in their car. And so we're trying to find ways to enhance that. well and then investing in existing assets so your parks and your streets and things like that so we make sure that as you're making improvements you're not only improving things from a utilitarian perspective but also from enhancing that image of the city and the character of the community as well next so the big ideas workshop here we are We had two meetings today. We had one about growth, conservation, and development. We had a meeting just a minute ago about arts, culture, and civic life. And then tomorrow, we have another meeting about economic development. There's a meeting then at 5.30 getting around Homewood. And we intentionally... Made that a broad heading. So it's talking about biking and walking and driving as well And then on Friday, we have another topical meeting about parks recreation open space and housing and neighborhoods So those meetings are different than this format. It's more of a roundtable discussion So we're just sort of eye to eye, you know elbows on the table Just talking about stuff in more detail than sometimes you do in a discussion like this So if that's any of these topics pique your interest feel free to come and participate. It's all open at the library.

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Oh, and we have open studio hours, too, so if those times don't work for you, we're actually, our office, we're set up there, our whole team, and we're just there from nine in the morning until seven at night, and so you can just drop in unless the library closes, but I think we'll just knock on the door, we'll hear you, and you can pop in and say, oh, I came to the meeting the other night, but I had this idea in the shower this morning, I had to share it with you, like, okay, you know where to find us, so.

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All right, so now we're going to start talking about some actual data. So for those of you who love pie charts and things, you're about to be excited. Have your mind blown.

And for the rest of you, if you need caffeine, good luck. And so I'm Tripp Muldrow with Arnett Muldrow and Associates. I'm pleased to be part of the team that's working here in Homewood. The slides I'm gonna share with you, these are good numbers, but they're preliminary numbers that may be subject to refinement based on sources and adding some additional like firsthand results. So if we go to the next slide, I think the first thing I want to mention is that, you know, we're dealing with a population here, the 2025 estimates from the census put you a little over 28,000. What we're seeing from a trend in Homewood is it's been steady, as she goes, kind of growth since 1960. There's not kind of been a up-down spike. There was 2000 to 2010 that was a little flat for the market, but pretty steady. That's something we typically see in a city that is, for all practical purposes, landlocked and fairly built out. You're not a greenfield city that's just building subdivisions out into the yonder, like Calera, Alabama, where they see spikes because they're seeing that massive growth in greenfields. Your median age here skews younger. Now there's a real reason for that, Sanford University, because the census counts the students where they reside at the time the census goes on. So when you have a university, it will tilt your numbers lower. Now what it's not doing for you because i've worked in tons of university communities through the years is that typically when you have the student population it'll push the age younger of course and it also pushes the incomes lower well that's not the case in homewood your median household income here is 113 000 about 114 000 significantly higher than the metro area not as high as mountain brook But y'all know that. And so, you know, it's important to look at that piece of it. And it's about 29%. of your population earns over 200,000. Households earn 200,000 a year. So very significant, affluent population. Your students at Sanford tend to get you a younger piece, so that factors in. And then another piece that I think is really important is a highly educated population. 69% of the residents here have a bachelor's degree or higher, which is really, kind of stratospheric in a lot of communities that I work in and so moving on to the jobs there's some really important points I want to make here the first one is your population 28,000 and change the jobs in Homewood 37,600 so your jobs here Exceed your population. So your daytime population basically balloons upward You probably know that but you you could be forgiven if you don't and I'll tell you partly why is that of that 37,000 this is census data 1,700 of those a relatively small amount live and work in Homewood and so you're importing 35,000 of those jobs are coming in every day. Almost 36,000 are coming in every day to Homewood. So two things can be true at once. If you're a resident in Homewood and you commute out, this could be viewed by you and your family as your bedroom community to where you commute. to someone who lives in another place in the metro area and they commute in, this is an employment center for them and their coworkers. Those two things can be absolutely true, depending on where you sit or where you sleep. And so having that perspective is important to look in. And you have significant number of residents that commute out I had to kind of do some deeper digging on the job categories. Healthcare, I expected to be number one, 17%. I did expect a relatively high number two on administrative, support, waste management. This covers a really wide array. I mean, it could be back of the house office workers. on down to waste management. I say down to, including waste management workers. I'm not saying above or below any of that. Finance and insurance, about 10%. Retail trade, 9%. And then I had, this is where my brain, I needed to kind of correction, is 7% in education. Wait a minute, Sanford, big, students, so forth. Why isn't that number one? Well, when I backed out and I actually looked at employment, Sanford is the number one employer. is that these numbers actually match when I look at Sanford's employment and also the school's employment. So it ends up not being percentage-wise significant, even though Sanford's your number one employer. Again, it's kind of like two things can be true at once. They can be a number one employer, but that doesn't mean, that's just one employer. That doesn't mean that all those jobs kind of comprise it because you're such a massive job market here. When we look at earnings, the way the census divides it up is it does it into three tiers. And so 51.7% earn more than $3,333 a month. Again, a reflection of another thing that I think is important to hold true or to talk about is that people commute in, but there's a significant number of high earners, relatively high earners. Oftentimes in communities where I see this pattern, And I'm working in another community in the metro area and this pattern bears out where the income of the people who work in that community is way lower than the people who live there because of all the service jobs, the retail, the dining and so forth. That's just not the case because you're such a powerhouse employment center. So I think it's important to kind of factor those pieces in. And this also factors into the next slide. and oh no not the next slide I got to talk about housing first you're okay you can go to the next slide I'm just out of order shouldn't come as a surprise to you your housing stock about 60% owner-occupied And keep in mind, group housing factors in. So that's partly, you know, so if you live in a dormitory, that counts as a housing unit as well. You're like, God, I don't think we have that many apartments. Well, the university's kind of skewing that number. The median value of owner-occupied housing, doesn't surprise you, you live here, you're dealing with it, the housing situation, anywhere 574,000 here in Homewood compared to 271,000 in the Birmingham Metro. The Zillow home value index shows it up 5% over the last year. So not only is it high, but it is increasing fairly rapidly. You're also a community where, because of your landlocked nature, a good portion of your housing stock is older than 26 years old. And that makes a ton of sense. Y'all know what the neighborhoods look like here. And that doesn't mean they haven't been renovated. It just means that when they were built, they were kind of prior to that. Only 15% was built since 2000. So when I talk about the importation of jobs, it does factor into the next slide here. And this goes into the retail trade here in Homewood. So I'm going to take a deep breath. You probably intuitively know this, but when I look at this, I look at what stores, retail stores sell here in Homewood vis-a-vis what consumers spend. and we know we live in a fluid society, so I'm gonna make some incorrect statements here, and kind of incorrect in that we're having to do some intellectual jump rope here. Your stores are, you're a $1 billion retail market. That is gigantic. I mean, it's huge. If your residents, if all of your residents spent all of their money on retail inside of Homewood, which we know you don't. Y'all never go to the summit. If they all spend inside, that spending power is only 799 million. So you're importing 224 million, if all your residents spend all their money here. So this goes back to what we said on that job importation. You're a retail importer too. The factor this is important from a finance standpoint and from a, you know, looking at a planning standpoint is that In Alabama, our cities are structured where sales tax, business license tax, accommodations tax, those things tend to drive the budgets for municipalities in Alabama compared to property tax, which would be, I live in South Carolina, it's almost the mirror opposite. Property tax is much more significant. So what it means in Alabama is it creates some planning dynamics that are they can be problematic and they can be problematic in that municipalities 10 want to be in a race for more sales tax to kinda offset that burden on property tax for the residents uh... and what this means for you all being a per high performer it just means that you want to keep your eye on the ball now and it was observed earlier today and I think important is that sometimes those businesses do cost more to serve than say a resident costs, but that revenue, that offset is important. So you're a retail center, you're an employment center, you're an affluent community, you're a steadily growing community. I do this so much and I'm always like, oh gosh, I gotta deliver the bad news. There's really not anything in this, you're firing on all cylinders. and so that gives us some really cool opportunities for you to make decisions from a planning standpoint as we move forward because if we were leading from behind and trying to fill a gap then that becomes oh gosh we got to figure out how to do this because that's not working right um and so the last slide just looks at growth um in that retail sec oh i do want to mention so i talked about that overall gain the number one gain for homewood restaurants. We had a good conversation at the last round table about Jack's, and that's not the only one, we just know it's from here. Your number one is restaurants, your number two is general merchandise, health and personal care, furniture and home furnishings, sporting goods, clothing, building materials, those are all market gains for Homewood. Clothing I almost never see, unless you have an outlet mall. The fact that you don't have an outlet mall, like when I worked in Leeds, they have a weird clothing bump because of the mall. When we look at that, the next slide looks at key categories with retail leakage and unmet demand. Different from restaurants, food and beverage retailers, Actually, there's more demand than there is supply for food and beverage retailers. Interesting. I want to dig deeper in that. You may have your own insights into that, like I wish we had a whatever. Food and beverage would be grocers. Yeah, yeah. And grocers is a subset of food and beverage. Motor vehicles is unmet demand. That's one that's like, well, Car dealerships are kind of locked in where they are. It's not a big deal. And that goes true with the growth too. Things like cosmetics and beauty supply and then drinking places. So you do a lot of sales, but keep in mind the drinking places can get really wonky in my numbers because of statutes, state statutes. And having a restaurant that maybe has a lot of alcohol sales, but they're categorizing as a retailer. In southern states, typically we don't have a lot of taverns. bars they're just not they don't categorize that they speak as restaurants but they serve alcohol you are expected to have growth in demand in the future and some of these are just irrelevant like there's a strong growth in in automobile sales but again I can't good conscious go why would we pursue that here it doesn't make sense how like where would it go and how would that even work because you know if you're going to buy a Mercedes you're going to Hoover you know If you're going to buy whatever else, you're maybe going to Birmingham. But you do have retail growth, and I think that's important to factor in. So I will stop here and hand it back to Brian. So I'm going to stop on the market stuff, and Vinish is going to talk transportation. I'm sure I have something to say about traffic with that inflow-outflow.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Vinesh Das Kodakandathil. I'm a transportation planner with tool design. So this is a summary of findings from our existing condition analysis. So we tried to see what are the key themes of issues and needs we have. be analyzed. First I think everyone might be able to relate it. Walkability is a key issue. There are a lot of sidewalk gaps right now in Homewood, which we need to strategically focus more on. Then there are accessibility needs. So we have the curb ramps. So we identified a lot of places where we have deficiencies. So we highlighted that as key findings. Oh, sorry. I'm a little nervous. Then the bicycle and trail connectivity. So we all know we have the Shades Greenway, which is pretty good. We have a big length, but we don't have enough connections to connect. We have on-street facilities which are fragmented right now. So we need to focus more on building more connections. And it will also help to connect our new growth areas. We'll be talking in the later stage. The next... We focused on safety issues, especially looking into the crashes. So we found crash hotspots are mainly concentrated on major roads and there were a lot of concentration on the downtown area, especially intersection related crashes. So we need to address that and we need to focus more on a safe system approach so we can strategically target priority locations and improve the condition. Next, we all know the traffic growth in this area, especially the regional corridors and the major roadways are pretty much heavy in traffic volume. So we need to look into that. We need to see how we can reduce that flow, then how the residents can commute to different areas easily. We looked into different projects, like the previous planned projects, and we found that there are significant funding gap. So there are a lot of projects planned for 2028, but they don't have enough funding. So we need more focus and coordination with the regional offices to to speed up that process. Next, the transit. So, we are looking for a multi-model community, so transit is a priority. As we all know, we have very limited transit facility, but the good thing, we are going to start micro mobility pilot project. So we can look into the data later stage when we run the pilot program and we can see where are the areas of interest like people from where exactly people are kind of taking more rides. Then we can decide on expanding the transit to those places. So that is a good initiative. Then we can use the data later. So overall, the need is more for a multi-modal approach we need to focus. So that will bring more safety, more connection. We also know there are a lot of aging community and younger population students and all. So we need to focus more on all age, all ability facilities. So as I said, the vision is more to create a connected multi-modal system of transportation where residents can use bike or walk and even in future take transit. And we have identified five big ideas, we call it, and later we'll be explaining what are the actions to get to those big ideas. Can you go to the next slide? The first one, improving the walkability. So, I'm not really sure you can see. So, there are sidewalk gaps highlighted and the curb ramp location identified but highlighted in those map. So, we need to focus more on prioritizing those. locations so we need to connect more to the key destination so we can develop a priority sidewalk program similar to that we can also develop a curb improvement program so we can strategically improve those locations. Similarly, for example, for schools. So there is a program called Safe Road to School. So we can use those kind of programs to improve connection to schools. And the other thing I already mentioned, there are a lot of parking conflicts in the downtown. So we need to see how we can address that, how we can improve more walkable scenarios in the downtown. So we have all good placemaking, all this good urban square. And if that is not really walkable, not connected, by sidewalk, then it's not really serving that purpose. So we need to focus more on that. Next slide, please. For the bicycle and trail connections, so we try to identify some connections which will be helpful in future. So these are basically the corridors. You can see the blue blue colored lines. So, we also overlaid regional networks. Those are like recommendations, older previously planned projects. We need to rethink on how we can make all of that recommendations into all age and all ability facilities. So, we'll be looking into that. FOCUS MORE ON STREET CONNECTION. WE HAVE VERY LIMITED ON STREET CONNECTIONS. spring highway so we have like a buffered bike lane there green springs so that is only a buffered bike lane so we need to create more protected bike lane that road is like a heavy traffic vehicle so we need to make it more comfortable to ride so what strategies we can implement so we need to think about that and we can coordinate with the regional agencies to develop more trails. If there is a project is ongoing, how we can coordinate and increase the speed of that work or the plan. Can you go to the next slide, please? Yeah. So this is the hotspot I was talking. So the dotted circles, the key are not exactly the major highways. Those are more connected to the downtown or the residential areas where we need to focus more on. So you can see all the highlighted areas. And in order to improve this, we also need to focus more on different type of programs. So we have a traffic calming program. So there are advanced opportunities to improve that program. So we can think about all of that. Can you go to the next slide? Then city we have a complete street program. So which is really good for a small community So we need to think how we can use that effectively one approach would be Thinking more on context sensitive and also coordination. So we need more coordination We need to make sure all the capital projects are kind of are following the complete street approach. Then the transit, as I already mentioned, we need to use the pilot study data to identify future service needs. And since we can't really improve new routes, so we need to see how we can improve the amenities and the bus stops. So how we can make it more attractive to the people I know the headways are very low. We had a discussion with the BCGA, the Birmingham Council, the transportation. They said they're ready to put the road, but the ridership is very low. So we need to think strategically how we can make it more attractive. I think that's all from my transportation elements.

All right, good evening. Are we doing okay again? All right. If you were here early enough, you saw some of the maps in the background of what we're calling sort of our growth and conservation framework map. I just wanted to remind everybody a little bit about how we got there, right, so that you understand what we're there, what's going on. And then even tomorrow, all day tomorrow during the drop-in, if you want to understand the method of the madness, dive into a specific parcel or property, I'm happy to do that with you. If you don't come, I'm also doing an impacts analysis. So we'll be able to make recommendations for infrastructure and the other things off of the maps that you see here. And then we can kind of course correct as we go through our planning process. But just to remind everybody where we were at, We did incorporate scenario planning into our process May 19th and 20th. We were here and we had what we called our growth choices workshop series. We presented to you three different futures. The way this works with scenario planning is we started at the same spot, which was sort of existing conditions. The community input we got during the ward one series events, And then eventually we will have, like right now, the consultant-recommended version and ultimately a version that makes it in the draft document and a version that gets adopted of this growth and conservation map. Those two things are certain. How we get there is this scenario planning, testing ideas out, trying them out, putting them side by side, getting more information around them, and then making better decisions as we move forward. So that's really what scenario planning has been about. So if you go to the next slide. You may remember, again, this was on May 19th and 20th. We were here in person. Hopefully some of you, if you weren't able to attend, also came. We did a whole online version of this. You're probably tired of hearing my voice at this point because we did the voiceovers for each of the stories and those kind of things that we had there. But we came to you with three futures. And these three futures were embedded in the engagement that we had collected up to this point as well as the data that we had collected and the analysis that we had done. And so again, tomorrow, if you're interested, we can pull these apart and we can show you all the public comments and things that led to these scenarios that we had if we just wanna remind ourselves why we're looking at what we're looking at this evening and into the future. The first one was sort of maintain the high life And it's kind of building on what Tripp has been telling you earlier. I mean, you all are kind of at your top of the game within the region. You're doing well. Other communities want to be you, frankly, is what we're hearing in some of our work. And so just how do you keep that momentum? How do you keep that separation that you've got now? And it was small tweaks that we were doing, but really kind of staying the course and keeping the compass pointing in the same direction. Scenario B that you see here was incremental change, and it's more about strategic infill. So looking at very specific sites, things that might be easy to redevelop, maybe something that was tired, just really could use some more investment. But it was very strategic, very pinpointed as we went through. And then the last one that you see here where it's hometown makeover, that's where we had some bigger ideas. And we're going to keep building on that concept as we do some drawings and things, some concept work for you to test those things out like a proof of concept. But really looking at some big opportunities that you may have within the planning area and what that might mean for you. And so that's kind of the three that we had here. And frankly, when we got the feedback, there wasn't just one clear winner. There were different parts of the different scenarios that resonated differently within the community. So as you go through and look at this map, you'll start to see, for example, scenario A about maintaining that high life. When you see the word areas to protect or things like that, you'll see a lot of the neighborhoods and stuff in there. That's just trying to keep the quality where it is, doing those things like maintenance and things that need to be done in order to just keep that bar high. The incremental change, you're going to see concepts about enhancement or strengthening areas. When you look at the map, that came from the feedback that we got for scenario B about being strategic and making really concentrated investments to get a good return on that investment. and then scenario c where you see looking at maybe raising the barn some areas when you look at the word transform on the map those are going to be areas that we think can really have what it is now and potentially better in the future and when i talk about this let me also put this qualifier out A growth and conservation map is also, you might think of it as a future land use map. Nothing within the community can be vacant on this map because if somebody comes in later on for development application or something, the community has to have a position about what its preference is for that area. And we don't know who might be coming in, so we have to plan everything. So when you look at these maps, you see no vacant land. It's not because we're trying to push you to build out or push you to grow too rapidly we have to think about the ultimate vision for the community and so the numbers may need to catch up or the market might need to catch up but we have to take a position so that when somebody does come to you you're prepared all right so when you look at these things and maybe some of these areas that might transform it might be 10 50 100 years from now but we just need to know that if they do come in what your expectations are for that place And so again, everything that we bring for you, uh, during this trip was embedded in the, in the, uh, feedback that we had gotten. And if you are interested in that, we'd love to peel the onion back with you tomorrow. I'll be at the library all day. Um, during those sessions and the drop in time, if you want to look at a specific parcel or a, you know, uh, if then what else, like, how did you get to this point? We'd be happy to show you everything as we go. It's a, it's a very transparent process. And then again, just as I had said during the meetings in May, we didn't just pick a winner and move forward. We kind of saw what resonated with everybody else. And even the things that maybe were scary to some people, we just said, well, how could we address that given the concerns that we were hearing? So again, what this is, is the consultant recommended version of the map. We purposely bring it out here to say, What do you think? Did we get it right? Did we not get it right? What can we talk about? And that's what this trip is all about. So please come by while we have our conversation this evening, or please come by tomorrow and just really check the map out and scrutinize it for us.

All right.

So I'm going to run you all quickly through what you're going to be seeing in detail on the map, but sometimes it's easier. And just, you know, looking at the colors and reading the explanation, it might kind of add a little commentary to it. So, as we said, we've got these different areas, areas to preserve, areas to protect, areas to enhance, areas to transform, areas to strengthen, and then what we call special districts. The areas to preserve are, you know, what we call the preservation sector. We refer to these colors as sectors. And so... It's like if it's open space or green space, it's preserved or it's green and you think it's preserved, then we're kind of saying, OK, we want to continue that forward. If it's not preserved, we're identifying those areas as well, saying, well, You may think this is green forever, but just so you know, it's not. And so we need to put some measures in place to preserve it if you want to. And so here you can see on the map these green areas. So, you know, safeguarding environmentally sensitive lands, protected in perpetuity from development, you know, nature preserves, city parks, greenways, et cetera. And so that's kind of how that looks. Next. Areas to protect. So this one's hard to see on this map, but it's the gray color, which is the most of the land area here. So we call this the neighborhood conservation sector. Most people aren't hoping all sorts of change is going to happen on their street, right, where they live. And so that's kind of what this is set up to be this this is really about Protecting and maintaining these existing character in these residential areas Having you know some precise changes, you know, obviously some things change but for instance in some of your you know Most beloved neighborhoods in the city right now. You're you know, we're hearing about teardowns and rebuilds and all that stuff and Okay, well, you know growth happens and we've been looking at historic maps from the founding of Homewood and you know Changes over the years and and things do change right and so we wouldn't want to say, okay Well, you've moved to town. Let's take a snapshot of it and nothing can change But if things do change, you know if a house is Needs to expand or whatever How do we do that in a way that isn't just completely changing the character of the neighborhood? And so we'll get into that level of detail and understanding A lot of that ultimately will be dealt with zoning down the road, but you start thinking about it at the comprehensive plan level, which we're at. And so we'd be sensitive to the scale, the rhythm, massing, design of what's kind of in that neighborhood already. And so that's kind of how that looks. Next. Areas to enhance. We call this the neighborhood reinvestment sector. And what we noticed is that you guys have already kind of off to the races in enhancing and working in the West Homewood-Oxmoor area in a way that people actually seem to be enthusiastic about. Lots of times we'll see we'll be working in a city and things are happening. People are doing a new little bit of this, a little bit of that. And the people who live in the neighborhoods are like, what's going on here? This is like, they're not excited about it. But we've actually been talking to people who live over there and they're like, oh, this is great. And so there seems to be this really unique and special synergy that's happening about what's going on there. So we basically are just saying, like, let's build on that, right? So whereas in the other areas that we just talked about, the areas to protect, you might just be thinking about, like, maintaining property values. Here it might be about doing something really cool, and now you're enhancing property values or whatnot. I think that what we like to do is build on work that you're already doing instead of just coming in and saying, hey, we think you guys ought to do this, and this stood out to us. So as you look at this on the map and make sure we kind of got the boundaries right, or even that this resonates with everyone. Next. Areas to transform. There's a lot of this. And, you know, if we didn't have this read on the map, we could probably ask you where you thought might transform. And you'd probably point out these areas. And, in fact, you'll have. That's sort of directed us to where we've been looking. Now, the hardest part, though, is this transform word. Because most people who aren't sitting around thinking about planning and going and researching planning, don't even conceive of the idea that a place can transform. They think, oh well, that area, that gateway to our city that we always direct people to a different way into the city from is like that forever. People just sort of take that for granted. And so what we know is all over the country, people are transforming. Typically, the low-hanging fruit, the easy thing is sort of outdated strip shopping centers and areas with giant, massive parking lots that are never full. And so... we are you know kind of targeting in on some of those areas um the other thing is you know there's uh there's been some discussion about um multi-family you know like i'm not sure about multi-family but we do have a housing problem and all and so we talked in a prior meeting about the idea that multi-family concerns tend to stem from the form that multifamily is built in today, or has been since 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and sometimes still today, in these giant apartment complexes where they, like, make the biggest and ugliest buildings they could possibly make and put a whole bunch of them together and then put a bunch of parking around them. And who's going to like that. Right. Uh, and then we started saying, well, we don't, we don't want multifamily. And then I said, well, who's never lived in an apartment before. And like, there's always one person in the room who raises their hand. And then I remind people that we all, everybody used to for the most part. And then we talked about how some of the surrounding communities, here have a tradition of actually really beautiful multifamily buildings or mixed use buildings. And so some of your housing concerns can be addressed in some of these areas. So you can transform an old, outdated strip center to kind of a cool mixed-use place and have some multifamily there. You have some commercials so they don't have to get on the highway and do all that. And actually people might want to go there. So there's ways to transform these things. We talk about road diets these days. Roads for the longest time have been built. much wider than you needed them to be because of various standards and engineering thoughts of, well, we just got to move the cars as fast as possible. And now we're having conversations about multimodal and people walking and biking and even in places where you wouldn't think they would want to. And in most of the places, why would you want to? Because they seem dangerous and scary and hot and there's no provisions for cyclists or pedestrians or whatever. And so a lot of this transformation can happen, but for us, it tends to be, such that we have to kind of share with you all and teach you all about what the possibilities are so then you can evaluate that. So this one tends to make people go like, yeah, I don't know what could be worse in those areas, but what is transforming? So next. And then areas to strengthen. So downtown and Edgewood are the areas that got kind of singled out for that. So this is sort of the infill and sort of building on what you've got and really building on the positive momentum you have. One of the things that I'm going to be interested in going forward is You know, you have lots of, let's call it underutilized property in this area around in the downtown. And I made the mistake in the last meeting of commenting on it. I said, you know, y'all spend a lot of effort and energy making this great city hall and this mixed use areas. And there's this plaza out here. And then you turn around and it looks like you're on a strip highway and there's jacks. And everybody's like, don't talk about jacks. And don't you know, they just remodeled too. That's brand new stone veneer out there, you know, and so whatever. And so I said, okay, fine, let's move a block over and talk about, you know, Homewood Dermatologist. I don't know if that's a real place or whatever. And so people were able to have the conversation a little less emotionally at that point. But I will eat at Jack's before I leave. We parked in the parking garage tonight. I'm going to test that out because I've been hearing about the parking garage. Totally great experience. Maybe stairs to the plaza sign could be a bit bigger. But other than that, so next on my list of to-dos is Jack's, so I've got to see what to-do is about. Anyway, Edgewood, downtown, no-brainers. Everybody loves those places, so let's strengthen them. Next. And then the special districts and a special district are areas that sort of don't neatly fit into categories. They tend to be sort of big uses that you're not really focused on them and sort of how they necessarily fit in the framework of things. Like an example would be if you had an airport here, you don't. But that's one that's often a special district, big industrial park. You're just like, yeah, that kind of needs to do its own thing. And we don't just look over there, just make your money and bring it into the city. And then sometimes you have special districts that are good things, like campuses, right? And so you happen to have a big campus here, and so it's a special district and treated in that way as well. So, next. So here you can see kind of all together, we're gonna see the map here on the back when you, once we're done here, and you can evaluate this. And as Matt said, this is our first take on it, right? So we literally, we're finalizing this in the past few days. We're like, okay, well, should it go over here and that boundary and whatever? And this is one of those places where at the beginning of this process, I talked about how the community is as important of a team member as any of the folks you saw headshots on the slide. Because you all know this place in a way that we can't. We can't go to every single street and double check to make sure that, oh, that should be in the... Red or the blue or the orange or whatever. And so you all look at the maps and you go like, what are you? That's a weird place to make that line. What is that? That's oh, great. Thank you. That's good to know. We agree. You know, so that kind of stuff is really helpful for us as we go forward. And then even looking at like. at the definitions, like they're on the map in the key as well. So you can see kind of like how we're describing these ideas of areas to transform and areas to preserve and protect, et cetera. And making sure that that all makes sense. There's a couple of things where we thought, you know, if like, If I were from Homewood and I saw this and this was in this color and that other thing was in that color and I go like, how do those things relate? And so we've tried to like get into your minds, you know, in advance, but we really need you to use your minds for us and tell us what to do. So next. So we're going to wrap it up here. We're going to do a quick Q&A before we put you all to work. So we've got our, I went through the schedule of this, so make sure you come in. These other meetings we've got this week and the open studio hours. What else we got here? Yeah, so let's chat. Anybody just super excited? Anybody super concerned? Like are we missing? Yes. yes yeah they'll be if they're not yet probably but they will be on there so we'll have it you can zoom in and all that stuff so yep yes sir yeah Is that in any of your analysis thus far? Yeah. Right. So if things showed up in prior plans, then they're being addressed and brought forward here. If any of them are things you're saying that aren't in prior plans but are of concern, then we need to make sure we document that and look at it as well. So...

Oh, yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah, it's... Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I saw that in the plan from, like, 20 years ago. There was, like, a connector across the highway there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, too. We, you know, several people today were talking about the Rosedale neighborhood, and we're – I got to see an old plan that some group had created, so we were studying that. I was wondering, and it's been confirmed that I was right, that there, it seems like there might have been some little commercial center there as well, and then the answer was, yes, there was, and in fact, It was primarily along where the Red Mountain Expressway goes, so you lost it. But some little remnants are still there, which is kind of interesting. Right, right. So we've been digging into it and really trying to understand because I know there was a focus on it a while back, and maybe not so much has happened since those plans were done. So we're going to see what we can do.

again a complaint level being threatened you said yeah yeah thank you anybody else

And I understand there used to be a hotel there, historically, in that area, which is kind of interesting. There's some really old churches back there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I've been noticing, too. Actually, I'm glad you started talking about this because I wanted to ask you all. I noticed you've got, like, brooks or creeks or whatever these things are that kind of weave in and then disappear under subterranean, and they show back up over here.

So you can build a vertical park.

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah, it seems like there's some real opportunity. It's a unique feature, right? And so you look at, like, the historic maps. They weren't all put in pipes and things. And a lot of cities are, you know, daylighting these streams and things. And I love how you guys have incorporated some of that into the parks already that you have because it ran along there. So I didn't know if that's a discussion that you all kind of continue on or just kind of keep them in the ditches and, you know, so daylight. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, what a good sort of unique feature and amenity and all of that. And could possibly help with our stormwater situations. Yeah. Yes, yes. The other thing that we're talking about today is how do you kind of distinguish yourself right from the other communities around and you know, Growing up in Vestavia, it's probably pretty easy to distinguish yourself from Vestavia. You know, there's not much there there, right? And maybe one day they'll get a heart of Vestavia. But, I mean, they have heart, but I mean like a physical heart, like a place where people gather. Because we used to have our parades down Highway 31. It was like, you know. So, but... you know, just kind of looking at my observation and just sort of the people that I've met throughout this process, and I have the general sense that you all are sort of a bit, the word that was used in the last meeting was more eclectic than some of the other surrounding communities, right? You know, you've got some unique flair to you. You know, I jokingly said, and this is where eclectic came around, I said, I nearly feel like you all have a hidden mural somewhere that says, keep Homewood weird, you know, like they do in Portland and in Austin. And I said, no, we're not weird. We're eclectic. I said, okay, keep Homewood eclectic. But to that end, you know, in that last meeting, it was arts and culture and civic. And I have kind of come away feeling like you all are a bit artsy, you know, or you aspire to be or you would appreciate it even if you aren't. And I've noticed there's a few murals, but I don't have the sense, like, you have the biggest plaza of any small town that I've seen, and there's not one piece of public art in it. And it may just be that y'all aren't willing to arm wrestle about what appropriate art is, because that's hard, right? But anyway, something that we're kind of thinking about, just ways to, you know, really enhance what is the image of the city different than everywhere else. We also were talking about tree preservation, tree canopy and all, and, you know, commenting It's pretty hard to beat Mountain Brook on architecture, right? They've just got great architecture for sure. But, you know, they aren't very artsy. And the great architecture, it's a bit, you know, plain. But they've also done a pretty good job of preserving and protecting their trees, except with their new, was it Lane Park or whatever, a new little development there, all the put a lot of care into the architecture, so it's pretty good, fits in, you know, overall. But, you know, what if you guys sort of went to that next level of green, and we talked about y'all are losing your canopy, because trees are aging, and without a succession plan, then, you know, you just sort of ultimately, one by one, you just, one day you realize, man, it sure is hot here. All the trees are gone, you know? So there's that, and then when, we've even talked about You know, there tends to be an ease of requiring developers to keep trees, but a homeowner, somehow, we're like, well, it's their property. We don't want to tell them what they can do. It's like, well, it's the developer's property, too, and you have no problem telling them that. So what if, you know, my tree has to come down, or I wanted my tree to come down. Maybe it has to come down because it's old. You need to put a new tree in, right? So we don't just lose our canopy over time. So... Even though you'll often hear me sort of zooming out, this is a comp plan. This is a comp plan level. It's high level. Some of the things that we get into are a bit fine-grained like that. And so there doesn't seem to be too much controversy about the tree canopy as far as saving it and whatnot. Yes, sir?

Yeah, we have great parks. I'm lucky enough to live in West Homewood, two blocks from Patriot Park. It's been a huge part of my child's, you know, growing up. We love going there and hanging out with friends. It's a great place to be together. I mean, I'm kind of surprised, you know, there was an opportunity years ago for Edgewood to have at least some green space right next to, on Broadway there. I know that was a conversation. Part of it was, well, you know, resources. make that park happen at this time. But we lost that to the developers. They developed it into houses. And it's honestly, some people don't think they're the best. But I think, you know, there's some kind of rule of thumb about, you know, you should be no more than half a mile from public green space.

Right.

And then it's also, how do we leverage the facilities we have for playgrounds?

I know in Edgewood, that's a, Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, right. Maybe the additional maintenance it would require by allowing people to use it more is much less than making a new park somewhere else. You know what I mean? So maybe there's the math equation there. the other thing too is you know in thinking about the vision for the future and making sure all the departments are synced up with that vision and I'm really encouraged that our main point of contact is is with engineering here because normally it's with planning and engineering is over in the corner like you know and it's like they're like i know they all said they want walkable streets but i don't care we're gonna have drivable streets and that's that you know um and then a lot of cities we work in too um where they have some of the more historic neighborhoods um then they have these older street trees and then the tree roots are buckling the sidewalks and then know public works is just like wow our job is make sure the sidewalks are nice and smooth all the time and so well i know what to do about that and we'll get rid of those roots in that tree and then no problem and then one by one by one and all of a sudden now you don't even need the sidewalk anymore because no one's walking because there's no shade because there's no trees and now the values in the neighborhood have gone down and et cetera et cetera absolutely absolutely exactly well and for sure and I was given the example in Boston the Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston it's sort of these famous crazy undulating sidewalks because of these old 200 year old trees there the sidewalks are made of brick though right so the bricks can kind of go with it and you know it's probably not ideal from a ADA perspective for sure but If you took all those trees down, the neighborhood would be totally different, right? So just making sure, and I haven't talked to the public works department about anything like that, but just making sure that you don't have any of those disconnects. If everybody else is heading in this direction, walkable and bikeable, whatever, and then somebody hasn't got the message that that's, it's okay to have a buckled sidewalk or we're going to, we're going to fix that. You know, my neighborhood, um, the first, you see the orange spray paints on the sidewalk pieces come up and then, then, you know, a few weeks later, the grinder comes in there and they grind it down and it's smooth until it goes up again. But you would never think about taking the tree down, you know? So, um, yes. yes yeah it's yeah it's just the price you got to pay you know to have the beautiful canopy right all right um anna can you you want to tell us a little bit about um what you're we're asking them to do back here with the with the maps so get put y'all to work

Okay, so you've got four maps behind you. They're all the same. But what we would like you to do is grab some sticker dots. The color doesn't matter. The number doesn't matter. It's really just for us to associate your comment with the dot. So there's some little pieces of paper that say, like, what number is your dot? What sector is that piece of property in currently? And then if you think it should be changed to a different sector, tell us what that is and then if there's any other comments you have you if you want to explain why and then you can just leave it on the table and we'll collect them whenever you're done put it on the map and