Greetings, neighbors! This is a reminder and a thank you. A reminder that after six years of engagement and input, City Council voted on updating the Rountree Urban Conservation District document on June 26. The UCD has been in place since 1985 and was last amended around the turn of the century. In 2015 the RNA began requesting dialog with the City on updating the UCD again, and that process began in 2017, first with the creation of the Rountree Neighborhood Plan, a visioning document. The UCD is the mechanism by which the Neighborhood Plan is brought to life and is the culmination of several years’ worth of engagement within the neighborhood, working with City staff.
Specific to the UCD, a steering committee and two subcommittees formed, one focused on the interior residential portion of the area and one focused on the commercial areas at the edges. Those groups met 15 times from 2019 to 2022. There were many different disciplines who worked in these groups: architects, engineers, realtors, business owners, developers, property owners and residents. One final open house in December 2022 presented the proposed changes to the public for comments and more input.
THANK YOU to everyone who’s given time and input on the neighborhood plan and UCD over the years. If you haven’t been following or would like to know more, some great resources are below. One good way to learn about what’s being proposed is watching the explanation to City Council from its last meeting on June 5. Senior City Planner Alana Owen provided a great overview beginning at the 2 hr., 20 min. mark in the video, link below. About 30 minutes of Council dialog and public input follows that.
Here’s a quote from her presentation worth noting about how the UCD fits in with the major comprehensive plan (ForwardSGF) that the community approved last year following a citywide public input process: “This (UCD) proposal is really at the heart of what ForwardSGF recommends, all the way from the vision statement at the very beginning of the plan where it talks about creating placetypes where people want to live and work, all the way to the guiding principle of ‘quality of place’ and then all throughout the document, every chapter, from the housing and neighborhoods chapter to the economic development chapter. … It talks about quality of place, creating placetypes, beautifying corridors, and updating the development code to be able to implement the recommendations of the plan. We’re looking at updating the city code citywide — this is the same thing on a smaller scale for this neighborhood.”
View all materials from the UCD update at https://www.springfieldmo.gov/5828/Rountree-UCD.