Highland Park Presbyterian Withdraws Rezoning Application

Big news from HPPC: The church has officially withdrawn its application to rezone and build a surface parking lot. You can read about new plans here.

(P.S. This came through after we went to press yesterday — doh! — so Friday’s paper doesn’t reflect it. The blog should have, though.)

By Georgia Fisher Oct. 7, 2010 | 4:00 pm | 6 Comments | Comments RSS
6 comments to "Highland Park Presbyterian Withdraws Rezoning Application"
  1. bob's mom @ October 7, 2010 at 5:21 pm
    The best idea is for the church to sell the entire block of houses, gain the 15 million dollars it’s worth, and use that money to build underground parking for the church under their own existing campus. Parking issue solved forever. Neighborhood left intact and beautiful. Church parkers happy. Neighbors happy. City Hall happy.

    Why isn’t this being considered IF the real issue is parking, I wonder?

  2. former scot #24 @ October 7, 2010 at 9:09 pm
    congratulations! the neighborhood can continue to deal with the surrounding streets filled with cars parallel parked everywhere.
    i hope the pedestrians, especially children and drivers are very, very careful when driving through the area.

  3. pragmatist @ October 7, 2010 at 11:29 pm
    Gotta agree with @bob’s mom. Everyone wins with that option. I think more Park Cities entities (i.e. YMCA) will have to consider going underground for parking because there’s nowhere else to go, and more parking lots are not the answer. An underground lot at HPPC sounds like a long-term solution that surely would answer everyone’s concerns.

  4. Neal @ October 7, 2010 at 11:35 pm
    The proposed parking lot would not have significantly reduced on-street parking on Sundays, and as far as I know was never intended to do so. The church always maintained that the lot was intended to shorten the walk of its elderly and disabled members.

    From the church’s website: “Our design task force has planned a plaza that uses our property to get 145 cars and our church vans off the streets, allowing our seniors, mobility impaired members, other members and visitors a beautiful and convenient place to park.”

  5. Avid Reader @ October 8, 2010 at 11:30 am
    @former scot #24, See Neal’s post. I never understood why people assumed that adding about 120-140 spaces would eliminate parking on the street. In reality it would just have reduced the street parking from extending out two and even three blocks out to only extending 1-2 blocks out into the neighborhood. Also, I’m pretty sure the “neighborhood” are more than happy to continue dealing with the situation as the “neighborhood” was the vocal opponent of the parking lot. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant parking plaza.

  6. bob's mom @ October 8, 2010 at 1:05 pm
    Neal: The former”Parking Plaza,” supposedly designed with mobility-challenged seniors in mind, only had 6 or 8 parking spaces designated for them. What’s with that?

    Their newest scheme includes creating parking spaces in back of each of the church-owned houses, which I believe would not be allowed as official church parking under the current zoning. So once again, HPPC would have to request zoning changes for the entire block. We neighbors see this as yet another sneaky attempt to rezone the block for future campus expansion. This whole effort was never just about parking.

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