Social community—is it “to be or not to be?”

A suggested ordinance for accomplishing a unified community approach to overall development.

The purpose of this ordinance is to establish a Community Consolidation component and a process for consolidating development, in order to reflect the total social community characteristics and settings for the Village of Shorewood.

1. Individual projects must be designed as elements of larger overall community settings. The total concepts must be graphically visualized, including use of 3-dimensional models, in order to assist all involved in guiding all other projects toward the larger overall design and broader concept.

2. The overall community setting concept must be developed before and as part of any proposal, or prepared by the developer or by Shorewood. to guide the individual proposals within this larger designed and illustrated scheme, beyond mere street scaping, in order to produce a sense of place and relationships to the existing physical and social features.

3. These units of overall community places or settings must be approved by the design review board.  If a Community Consolidation Commission is to be established for this purpose, it must approve all proposals before any projects can be acted on and later approved.

4. Once the various approval agencies and the Village Board approve the overall community setting concept, then proposals for development within that concept can be sought or considered in fulfilling the overall community concept.

5. Each proposal must meet the requirements of the various approving committees in accordance with the requirements of this ordinance before being permitted to proceed with development plans and with normal processes for the specific project and its final approval.

6. All steps and discussions must be public, allowing individual citizens to participate at all stages of the design, integration and consolidation process and at preparations of plans and programs for development.