The Hoopla Around Huff Park

UPDATE 2023-08-02: The owner of the properties backed out of the meeting of the Creston Land Use committee scheduled for 2023-08-02. You can read 👉the letter from Copperrock Construction👈. In short, there is no plan to present. This is a textbook example of an outbreak of NIMBY Fever.

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You may have heard that there might be some development adjacent to Huff Park, which is in the Creston neighborhood. It is confusing. There is a significant amount of, clearly disingenuous, organizing to oppose development of multi-family housing adjacent to the park. No developer has filed for a Special Land Use or variance request related to the parcels in question. No project has been presented to the Creston neighborhood's Land Use Committee.

There is a MoveOn petition to oppose any multi-family development which may "encrouch" on the park. The text of the petition is NIMBY boilerplate:

An encroaching development of apartment complexes adjacent and backing up to Huff park will significantly negatively impact the biodiversity of the park. While the city wants to increase development growth, this reduces green spaces making the city less desirable for living. Preserving green spaces makes the city more desirable for living in the long run. There are other spaces that do not encroach on important wetlands that can be developed. The proposed multiple unit development adjacent and backing up to the Huff Park will also significantly increase traffic around the area and proposed parking spaces for these units have not been discussed.

Parking ✅ Greenspace ✅ Traffic ✅ Yes-But-Somewhere-Else ✅ Specifically call out multi-family ✅ ✅

So for starters who owns what? Where is this? This maybe-a-development is on the north side of Knapp between Ontario and Ball. Provided here is map of the parcels between Ontario and Ball. The highlighted parcels are owned by corporations, the not highlighted parcels appear to be Owner Occupied [although this cannot be verified]. On each highlighted parcel is the first letter of the name of the corporation which owns the property.

• The largest contiguous collection of parcels is 2.62 acres
• 5.48 acres (51.2%) and ~$2.5M in value (38.2%) are owned by corporations.
• 5.22 acres (48.8%) and ~$3.9M in value (61.7%) are owned by owner occupants.

All parcels are zoned as LDR (meaning Low Density Residential); thus any multi-family development would require a Special Land Use granted by the Planning Commission at a public hearing.

Who are these corporations?

News

• Neighborhood backlash ensues after developer buys properties along Grand Rapids park, natural area, Crains, 2023-07-20
• Talk of housing development worries Huff Park neighbors, WoodTV, 2023-07-18