Bill & Rebecca CopeTo:
Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Council Members Anne Little Roberts
Genesis Milam
Joe Borton
Treg Bernt
Luke Cavener
Ty Palmer
As the home owners at 1401 nw 7th Str. for over sixteen
ears m wife and I are alarmed at the Cherry Blossom
Y y field,
Place development proposed for the empty r, the
formerly a property of the McFaddon estate, across
road from our house. Nor are we alone in our alarm.
Every neighbor we have spoken to from within a
quarter mile radius going south, north or east from our
home, is voicing the same concerns. Like Rebeca and 1,
they all realize cramming almost 60 single-family
dwellings s into the center of our neighborhood will
debase the very nature of our lives heye.
you think I exaggerate, just imagine traffic flows in
If a factor of three to
your neighborhoods increasing by ht and noise
pollutionfour times, the corresponding increase in ligl
tion the obvious surge in human density—and a
,
in a matter of a few months.
Were you to have asked residents of our neighborho®d before this proposal was even considered, you would
ve learned a primary attraction hasrbeen the relative
ha
z
quiet and calm atmosphere that comes from having
little through traffic, There are no business or public
destinations with the exception of Meridian Middle
School within or near the neighborhood that would
attract non-residents, and MMS cannot be accessed by
any street within our neighborhood except for Carlton,
and that only peripherally.
Generally speaking, the neighborhood consists of that
area between Eighth and Fourth Streets, Pine and
Cherry Lane, with the center (and oldest component)
being what has been referred to as the Welker
Subdivision." I have been around long enough to know
this subdivision was built in the mid-to-late 1950s, and
was planned to allow families, especially the kids, easy
and safe access to broad swaths of connected lawns, all
linked by the quiet streets of Washington and Carlton. It
continues to this day to be defined by active pedestrian
traffic from individuals, couples and entire families out
for a walk or a bike ride.
Also, providing such proximity to Meridian Middle and
Meridian Elementary schools means the roads are full of
kids twice a day. There are no sidewalks within the
older sections of the neighborhood, nor are any wanted.
What we have now is a compatible, comfortable ratio of
pedestrian, bike and vehicle traffic. And we find it
maddening, at the least, that this development would
disrupt that ratio so radically.
And now, it's proposed that not only will an access to
the development be routed onto Seventh Street not 100
feet from the walkway to the middle school, it will be
the entrance to an over -developed hive of miniscule
lots, that will --under the current proposal --represent
almost twice as many new residences as all the existing
houses surrounding that development, combined.
Then there is the question of the availability of
irrigation water. I know from past experience that any
loss of access by established users to the water we have
been paying for decades is grounds for litigation, to
which most of us would not hesitate too turn.
We realize that cramming as many marketable units, be
they apartments or single-family dwellings, onto every
open space left is merely another example of how
Meridian, and the Boise Valley in general, is being
developed without any respect or regard for the pre-
existing neighborhoods, established patterns, the
nature of the area—in short, everything that made us
want to live here in the first place. Perhaps those in
control of zoning and planning feel comfortable that
such a travesty of disruptive development could never
happen in their neighborhoods. Yet as a consistent
voter, I can assure you that should this be allowed to
stand as proposed, there will be an accumulative
negative effect.
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94
t
Remember, as the City Council, you are designated to
represent all citizens of Meridian, not merely the
development community.
Thank You,
Bill and Rebeca Cope.
L