OWANA Steering Committee

Meeting Minutes for February 5, 2001
David Smith's house

Steering Committee present: David Smith, Thom Person, Dave Sullivan,
Pauline Brown, Laura Morrison, Katy O'Neill, Denise Younger, Marjorie
Hook, Paul Seals, Red Wassenich

Guests: Mark Stine, Alan Muskin

  1. National Historic District


    2. The letter of eligibility to get National Historic District status should be fairly easy to get. This should limit federal money for projects that would destroy houses, such as some of the MoPac expansion ideas being considered. However some of the details on this are not clear. The next step, actually documenting the area to get the status, is a lot of work and would have some serious expenses.

    The question arose of who would actually sponsor this application.

    The group north of OWANA involved in this process is including south to 12th St. in their actions. Katy and Laura will contact them about letting us handle the area to Enfield, which matches our neighborhood association area.

    The next meeting on this is March 6.

  2. Variance Requests


    3. Alan Muskin spoke about his proposed development at 610, 612, 614 Pressler. He is in the process of purchasing these 3 houses in order to tear them down and build larger ones. The current houses are approximately 800 sq. feet; the new ones would be 2300-2700 sq. feet, which is allowable by code. The current zoning is for Multifamily. Muskin would support rolling back to Single Family. He also expressed willingness to meet with OWANA's Design Guidelines Committee.

    The Steering Committee visited the site with Mr. Muskin (who built the new houses on the other side of Pressler). In discussion, issues brought up included protecting the trees on the lots and, more important, the scale and character of the proposed designs, which are seen as not in keeping with the neighborhood. Mr. Muskin is seeking variances relating to setbacks. The committee unanimously voted to oppose these on the basis of the character and scale of the proposed houses.

    On the variance requests heard last month, the committee voted to not oppose the ones sought by the Moores or Warmingham.

    Dave Sullivan will draft letters on all these.

  3. Letter to Board of Adjustment


    4. Dave Sullivan distributed a draft of a letter to be sent to the city's Board of Adjustment regarding OWANA's overall attitude and process on taking stands on variance requests. This will be discussed at the March general membership meeting. The gist of it is that the adopted neighborhood plan should form the basis of our decisions. A reference to the plans advocacy of not tearing down existing houses will be added.

  4. MoPac Expansion


    5. TxDOT is still looking at all options, including adding a 3rd/4th St. east-west corridor through our neighborhood and long entrance/exit ramps that would cost up to 130 houses from Town Lake to 34th St. The neighborhood groups combined to monitor MoPac are going to contact CAMPO, which has to sign off on road developments.

  5.  
    6. It was proposed adding to the March general membership meeting a discussion of advocating expanded pedestrian crossing features at 6th and Lamar.

  6.  
    7. Mark Stine reported the West End Alliance is looking at various east-west corridors in terms of business development. He is going to make sure they are aware of our neighborhood plan.


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