HomeMy WebLinkAbout2/22/2023 Item 4a, Devlin
Mary Devlin <
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:Downtown Density Program- Hooray for downtown density!
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Hello,
My name is Mary, and I live here in San Luis Obispo. My partner and I are young professionals who went to college at Cal
Poly and we have lived in San Luis Obispo for 6 years. We love San Luis Obispo and believe that increasing density is
necessary and the best choice for keeping the city of San Luis Obispo a cool, walkable, and wonderful place to live. A
dense, multi-use downtown that offers housing alongside shopping will help create a stronger downtown, increase the
economic health of the city, lower infrastructure costs and help SLO attain energy efficiency, and create opportunities
for people to live a lifestyle that allows them to live, work, and play within walking, biking, or bus distance. Density done
right is beautiful, and creating density downtown will allow more people to be able to live near the economic heart of
SLO.
As much as my partner and I love SLO, we often fear for the stability of our future here. My partner works for a local
business in San Luis, and I work in the environmental field protecting our local wildlife. Neither of us make a large salary,
and we notice the lack of affordable and middle housing in the city. We don't want to live in a luxury apartment on the
edge of town, or a house in the suburbs (which we will never be able to afford anyway). We want a safe, reasonably
affordable place to live that allows us to walk, ride our bikes, enjoy public spaces, and be a part of our community. The
suburbs aren't going away anytime, but we wat more options. We support the Downtown Density Program!
San Luis Obispo is growing, regardless of what some folks might desire. We can allow our city to be swallowed up by the
inefficient, inequitable, and costly burden of urban sprawl while ignoring the flexibility of density OR we can embrace
the flexibility of density and multi-use zoning and expand our awesome downtown and reinforce the walkability of our
city. The former option is bleak and broken, the latter is step toward a vibrant and healthy future.
The Downtown Density Program is exciting as is, however, I believe it could benefit from these changes:
- Allow projects to use both the Downtown Density program and Density Bonus program
- Allow the program to be used in the entire downtown area, not just the downtown core. Allow benefits to spread
throughout the downtown area!
- Remove expiration date! Building takes time and multi-use density is still going to be good thing 5 years from now!
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- Remove all parking requirements. We have plenty of parking and are looking to increase alternative forms of
transportation. Let's build a city around people, not cars :)
Thank you for your time,
Mary Devlin
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