Lyle & Grace Shaver

Council Meetings: The Blue Springs City Council meets on the First and the Third Monday of the month. Meetings start at 6:30 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room in the Howard L. Brown Public Safety Building, located at 1100 SW Smith Street in downtown Blue Springs. The public is encouraged to attend! City Council Meeting Agendas: Click above to view the City Council meeting agendas, cataloged by date, on-line!

Council Notes

In an effort to maintain transparency in your government, I will post my summary of council meetings, complete with my rationale for my votes. The press does not always have space or resources for thorough analysis. It is my hope that this page can fill in the blanks.

At the May 21, 2007 City Council meeting I voted against the proposed Coronado Place for the following reasons:
 

The project did not meet minimum setback requirements. In fact they proposed only 10’ compared to our minimum of 25’ – a 60% reduction. Sunday I drove around East Independence looking at similar commercial developments. All setbacks that I found in new developments were over 30’. I feel an obligation to support our standards unless there is a major over riding reason. Why should Blue Springs accept less quality in development than Independence and Lee’s Summit?

In addition, the project did not meet our open minimum requirement of 40% proposing 30% or a 25% reduction. Why have standards if we don’t enforce them?  

To a lesser extent, this is the same problem we have along North 7 Highway, but the properties are already built and many of the lots are too shallow to accommodate a pleasing setback.  I had hoped we had learned from past problems. I believe in learning from the past and not repeating problems if possible. If we as a City Council don’t expect our standards and codes to be met, who will?  

It apears to me the developer is simply trying to overbuild for the land area.

The proposal included a sit-down restaurant, 3 or 4 Fast food restaurants, a tire store, bank and about 4 small retail shops. During my campaign knocking on over 2200 doors, I can not recall a single resident asking for more fast food restaurants or banks - these use over 1/3 of proposal’s land area.  Yes, residents do want sit-down restaurants and more retail, and furthermore many add they want quality and more choices in retail and restaurants. They question why Blue Springs does not have quality choices like Lee’s Summit and Independence. My understanding is at least two of the proposed fast food restaurants already have multi-locations in Blue Springs. 

This location is one of the most prime locations, if not the most in Blue Springs for retail development – great visibility from I-70 next to an intersection with high local traffic generated by Wal-Mart, Home Depot and soon the Red Development. Once the Shopping Center is completed, I have no doubt that there would be several opportunities for high quality development of this property that would meet our minimum standards.  This is what I want to see and I believe it is what the majority of District 1 residents want.