The City Council continued discussions on building height and student housing downtown at its meeting Tuesday, Sept. 1.
Citizens on both sides of the debate had a chance to speak their minds.
Linda Dean, Auburn resident, is in favor of lower building height, and said because of recent studies which have discovered Auburn is overbuilt, a moratorium should be added back to the agenda in the Urban Core area.
Dana Camp, Auburn resident, said the main issue right now is how downtown will look to students. Camp said many people are students, and many of them come back after they have graduated.
Camp said residents love the small town feel of the community
“A 75 foot building just doesn't look good,” Camp said. “It doesn't belong in the neighborhood, period.”
Camp said she drives down College Street every day, and fears eventually the first thing she will see when she crosses the train tracks is the potential 75-foot retail and student housing building, not the quaint little village she said she enjoys seeing each day.
Chris Kearns, Auburn resident and owner of Badger Properties, said the potential housing is not only for students, but professors and graduates as well. Kearns said these people are also in need of housing.
Kearns said just because a building is tall does not mean it is ugly. He said some of the shorter buildings downtown could be considered just as ugly as the bigger ones.
“Our downtown is actually not Disney World,” Kearns said. “It’s not a tourist town either … it’s an active, thriving business community.”
Stone Ray, freshman in architecture, who lives at 160 Ross said the idea of “new urbanism” does in fact care about the character of the town.
“New urbanism is not about malls or suburban looking things, it ‘s a city for humans,” Ray said.
Ray said he knows 160 Ross is frowned upon, but that the building and location has improved his quality of life.
According to Ray, housing closer to campus and downtown would allow for less traffic because more people would be walking to class, shops and restaurants.
In other City Council news:
The council invoked the entertainment district, which will allow for live music and later store hours in the downtown area on the Friday nights before football games.
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