by William Crum
The Strawberry Hill Neighborhood Association recently held its monthly meeting to talk about neighborhood design.
The Strawberry Hill neighborhood, like others in the community, is known for its historical heritage.
At the Thursday evening meeting they had a special guest, Rob Richardson, planning director for the Unified Government.
At the meeting Richardson talked about the traditional neighborhood design. The purpose of this program is to establish and encourage innovative mixed use development as an alternative to typical suburban, use segregated developments. It is an effort to make better use of the land and the urban area.
Within this program the UG will assist in providing a range of housing choices in close proximity to each other and produce quality public spaces that are usable for a variety of public and semipublic activities, he said. It also entails high standards of design and construction for buildings, public infrastructure and landscaping. By implementing this program it will definitely improve the area, he said.
A lot of people like to have everything close by, in fact, a lot of people would rather walk instead of driving. “I would love to walk instead of drive,” Richardson said.
Another item was the issue of what it takes to be a historical neighborhood. There are a lot of hoops an organization has to go through before it can be designated as a historical neighborhood, he said. Nothing is definite yet, and a study is currently underway to see if it will truly work for the neighborhood, according to Richardson.
At the end of the meeting a representative from the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department spoke about what crimes were committed recently within the Strawberry Hill area. Afterwards Richardson and other members of his staff were available for questions.
