The TLNA Blog

Mark your calendars. The final public hearing for our Neighborhood Protection Overlay has been placed on the City Council’s agenda for: Monday, April 21, 7:00 p.m. at City Hall (101 City Hall Plaza) This is the night the Council will vote on whether to approve our NPO. If it passes, the NPO will be added to Durham ’s zoning ordinance. After our 10-minute presentation, we will ask everyone who supports the NPO to please stand. Please plan to come to the hearing and support an NPO for Tuscaloosa-Lakewood. If you need a ride, contact Frances Kerr ( frances@duke.edu ; 490-6942). The final draft of the Tuscaloosa Lakewood NPO text is now available for download: Download text as Word Document: 2008.03.19_TL_NPO_Final_Draft.doc Download text as PDF: 2008.03.19_TL_NPO_Final_Draft.pdf Download map boundaries as PDF: tl_npo_proposed_map.pdf For the Planning Department's description of the NPO process, scroll to “Neighborhood Protection Overlay” at...

The final draft of the Tuscaloosa Lakewood NPO text is now available for download: Download text as Word Document: 2008.03.19_TL_NPO_Final_Draft.doc Download text as PDF: 2008.03.19_TL_NPO_Final_Draft.pdf Download map boundaries as PDF: tl_npo_proposed_map.pdf For the Planning Department's description of the NPO process, scroll to “Neighborhood Protection Overlay” at the following link: http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/planning/applications.cfm#NPO History: The neighborhood first started working on an NPO in the fall of 2006. The document has gone through many drafts, with input from neighbors and staff members in the City-County Planning Department. The Joint City-County Planning Committee voted to support the adoption of the NPO at its meeting in January 2008. The Planning Commission recommended adoption in February 2008. Next Steps: This final draft will go to the City Council for a vote at their next available meeting (probably in April). If the City Council approves it, the...

Planning Commission Recommends Approval of our Neighborhood Protection Overlay Vote: 9-1 The Joint City-County Planning Commission voted to recommend our proposed NPO for adoption by the City Council. By a 9-1 margin, planning commissioners supported the goals and the bulk of the language of the NPO. They lauded our efforts to protect our unique and extensive tree canopy against unstudied development, and agreed with most other provisions in the NPO. They also recommended that language in the NPO pertaining to commercial properties be clarified to better explain how the NPO affects commercial properties not converted from residential houses. We believe this clarification to the NPO language will help the few businesses who have not yet completely seen the benefits of the NPO come to understand its purpose. We will work with them and the Planning Department in the coming weeks, doing our best to extend the broad consensus we have worked to achieve throughout this process. We could n...

Those big red and yellow zoning signs that recently appeared throughout the neighborhood were placed by the City-County Planning Department to announce the public hearing for our proposed NPO. The hearing will be part of the City-County Planning Commission's February meeting: Tuesday, February 12 5:30 p.m. City Council Chambers, City Hall (first floor) We need your support at the public hearing to show the Planning Commission that the neighborhood supports adoption of the NPO. The NPO Committee will make a ten-minute presentation. At the end, we'll ask all the property owners present who support the NPO to stand up. The more people we have, the clearer the message will be to the Planning Commission that the neighborhood wants the adoption of this NPO. To see the latest draft of the proposed NPO, click on this link: http://tlnadurham.googlepages.com/2008.01.31_TC0608_TL_NPO_Attachment_.pdf To see a map of the boundaries for the NPO, click on this link: tl_npo_proposed_map.pdf Fo...