After more than a year and a half of planning, Auburn City Council unanimously voted to adopt portions of the Northwest Auburn Neighborhood Plan at its meeting Tuesday night.
The plan covers 1.4 square miles of the northwest part of town, and the city says it will encourage redevelopment and improve the streetscape of the area.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the council adopted the component of the plan that amends the future land use of the neighborhood, affecting areas around Bragg Avenue, North Donahue Drive, Martin Luther King Drive and Shug Jordan Parkway.
The city says the amendments will lead to more commercial use along Martin Luther King Drive and Bragg Avenue, increase mixed-use development and foster neighborhood-scale residential development.
The journey to get to this vote has been long for city staff, and the public meeting on Tuesday was no different than how others have been throughout the development process: contentious.
Accusations of neglect and malice were levied against council members by former Ward 1 Councilman Arthur Dowdell and outspoken resident L.B. Jackson.
The city has held multiple public meetings since the plan’s inception, both for citizen input and education, and at one point, delayed the plan in January 2017 to hold more.
At recent City Council and Planning Commission meetings, Jackson has continued to ask for additional small public meetings with the city.
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A meeting between city staff and community stakeholders was held last week, and Ward 1 Councilwoman Verlinda White, whose ward encompasses areas of Northwest Auburn, said on Tuesday that another meeting between the city and members of the northwest community could be scheduled for as soon as next week.
Mayor Bill Ham, responding to Jackson and Dowdell, rejected the claims of intentional neglect to the predominately black neighborhood.
“The whole northwest scenario started because a group of property owners and people that live or have lived in Northwest Auburn came to the city, met with the City Council in hopes for revitalization of Northwest Auburn,” Ham said. “The easiest thing to have done in Northwest Auburn, to have kept any of this from happening, is nothing — to do nothing, just let it go, which is not the right thing to do.”
Ham said going forward the city will continue to try to improve the area, partly by increasing the affordable housing stock.
The vote on the plan came more than four hours into the council’s regular meeting, but the wait was well worth it for some attendees who said they had been ready for the changes for years.
“We need progress on the west side of town,” said Auburn resident Pamela Pitts. “No growth is just a breeding ground for negative activity. … We’ve already had meetings for two years. Let’s not wait another 50 years.”
The council will vote on the zoning components of the neighborhood plan likely in the summer. Proposed rezoning in the area is targeted at conserving the character of the neighborhood while also allowing for economic development.
“We’ve got more issues than moving dirt around in Northwest Auburn,” White said. “We’ve been tabling long enough. I think we need to move ahead.”
The full Northwest Auburn Neighborhood Plan is available on the City of Auburn's website.
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