Last night I attended the long range planning “visioning” meeting for Tosa's west side area. A small group of folks pored over maps in the basement of the police department, drawing colored lines and pasting colored stars to show where we thought things in Tosa should change.
At our table was Helmut Toldt, developer, who is resubmitting plans to develop the Walnut Street site. (I’m not breaking this story: it’s in today’s Business Journal. But you can still say you heard it from me first!)
For the most part, he came to listen. After all, this was the neighborhood that would be most directly affected by site development on the landfill.
We had no strong ideas about the site, and he didn’t press us.
But at one point he asked quietly, “Is there any development that’s happened around here that you
like?”
It was a good question. We’re awfully good at what we don’t want and what we fear. But not so good at embracing new things. None of us had an answer, though now I might say the new Locker building and the posh Mandel condos in Elm Grove.
And after I did my homework, I might point to Toldt’s own
SixPoints Neighborhood development at 66th and Greenfield. I’d seen it earlier in the day when I visited the Farmer’s Market, and thought “whoa! Where did that come from?”
The more I look at the dense and thoughtful development, the more I like it, once I get used to the scale.
When I first heard about Toldt’s earlier proposal for the Walnut Street site, some 400 units of mixed use, I thought it was too dense. But then I got to thinking how badly the west side needs a center, and how it might start there, a mixed use higher density area.
The SixPoints development includes a community center. For the west side of Tosa, that’s where our planning should start, too.
This is not a paid or unpaid advertisement for Toldt, who I didn’t consult in writing this, by the way.
