Houses in the proposed expansion area of the Lakewood Conservation District. Photography by Renee Umsted.
The city’s department of Planning and Urban Design expects to present a draft ordnance for the Lakewood Conservation District Expansion to neighbors this fall.
Within the next few weeks, the department will provide the draft to the City Attorney’s Office for review, said Trevor Brown, a chief planner for Conservation Districts with Planning and Urban Design.
They expect the process for reviewing and editing the ordinance to take about six weeks, Brown said; however, circumstances outside of their control can affect the timeline.
Once the planners know how many revisions will be required and when the draft should be finalized, they’ll prepare to notify residents about a meeting date and location to go over the draft.
Lakewood neighbors last met with Brown and his team in March, wrapping up neighborhood conversations to discuss architectural and developmental standards to be included in an ordinance for the proposed expansion are of the Lakewood Conservation District, an area that includes 275 homes.
At the draft review meeting, the neighborhood will be invited to give feedback on the draft. But Brown has said that only minor changes will be made to the ordinance at that point.
Afterward, the ordinance will be presented to the City Plan Commission. Residents who want to share their opinions on the draft may speak at the meeting or respond via mailers sent by the city.
A group of homeowners, many of them on Tokalon, have spoken out against the expansion effort, saying they don’t want to be included in the expansion area.
District 9 City Plan Commission member Michael Jung told the Advocate earlier this year that if there is opposition from neighbors at the draft review meeting, he would want to meet with those neighbors and flesh out the issues.
“I want to understand what their reasons are,” Jung said. “I want to evaluate if I think their reasons are valid. If they are valid, I want to think about, talk about, OK, is there a way to address those concerns short of carving them out of the ordinance altogether, or is carving them out the best solution?”
Supporters of the expansion effort say that the conservation district is needed to preserve historical and architecturally significant homes and the character of the neighborhood.
