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Our La Crosse Common Council essentially established two new policies when it comes to multi-family houses, even though the ad hoc Multi-family Housing Design Standard Committee had yet to hold its first meeting.
Apparently the new policies are:
First, multi-family houses must have one off-street parking space per bedroom. Second, if there isn’t room on the same parcel where the apartment is built for all of the required parking, it is OK to pave a parcel down the block for a satellite parking lot.
The status quo of paving the entire rear yard of a rental property so the only green space is a 15-20 foot front yard also continues. This is in spite of what was learned when the city paid $20,000 to a consultant to study multi-family house design.
People want to live in places with some character and green space, not big, plain boxes with asphalt wastelands.
Residents have decried the big monoliths with nothing but asphalt and garbage receptacles for a backyard for years, yet the council seems to think one more in a traditional neighborhood is still acceptable.
Once again a spot zoning change for a single project for a well known developer with a good reputation is determining policy rather than measured study and community input. The issues here aren’t the developer or even an apartment, but the suitability of an apartment of this size at this location and the standards this spot zoning change sets for the future.
In this instance what is proposed is simply too big for the parcel and inappropriate in an historic residential district.
The rationale is the size of the development is dictated by economic factors to replace the existing single family homes that were converted to rentals, but this ignores the negative economic, social and environmental impacts on neighborhood.
What’s interesting is when one visits any of our peer college towns and their traditional neighborhoods, they don’t have these monoliths surrounded by asphalt on tiny lots like we have here in La Crosse. They have newer apartments and some are actually quite large, but they are also on larger lots so there is room for parking as well as plenty of green space.
These mega apartments on miniscule parcels simply are not in the best interests of our community. It is well past time for the council to consider the overall best needs of all of our neighborhoods rather than pick away at them one spot zoning change at a time.
Charles P. Weeth is president of Livable Neighborhoods, a neighborhood advocacy group in La Crosse.
