They should think twice before they say that students will desecrate the cemetery. That was low.

And with Kit’s help, it might not be reliable even then.

“If zoned Downtown General, the sale barn property developers (these or anyone else) would have to comply with the City’s access management regulations, urban residential design standards, and Downtown General zoning standards. While this is not an all-inclusive list of the code requirements to which the developers will be held, these are the ones that will inform the “form” of the development pattern the most.

The Downtown Design Overlay District standards will not apply to this project; those architectural standards were developed with a set boundary, determined to be architecturally appropriate for the downtown only. I just wanted to make sure everyone is clear on that point.”

Thanks for the intelligent, well-thought out response to all these questions. I agree with your assessment of the parcel and how it can serve as a transition from the neighbhorhood into the Mill District. I just really hope that the council will bear in mind the importance of making this a quality development that will stand the test of time, and not allow it to become another future blighted apartment complex. I can’t imagine Campus Crest remaking their business model to suit Fayetteville, but stranger things have happened.

As far as traffic calming goes, we rely on studies performed by our own engineers and we make those calculations when a development is in the design process, not the rezoning process. In other words, any traffic calming that we find necessary will have to be put in place before the development is approved.

In my opinion, the whole issue with density is how it’s applied in a community, and RMF-24 allows some pretty ticky-tacky, isolated development. Downtown General is supposed to ensure that an isolated, community-draining development isn’t possible.

I think what a lot of neighbors are fearing is that this will be a huge encroachment on their pleasant neighborhood, and I just don’t see that being the case. During construction, yes, but not as much as Aspen Ridge (which is closer to more homes than the sale barn) but after the fact, not so much.

I think we really need to pay attention to our long-term vision for Fayetteville. The single-family core of your neighborhood must be protected, but the edges have to become more dense as we plan for light rail, bike paths, and walkable streets. This property is on the very edge of your neighborhood.

When I think about this property, I think it’s right in the middle of the Mill District, a beautiful neighborhood with an iconic cemetery, and a sprawling five-lane street. This property is an important part of making that mish-mash area of town more usable and vibrant. It’s exactly the kind of area the 2025 plan says should be slightly more intense than single-family, but not as intense as the intersection MLK and School, or the businesses right along either street.

I’m sorry that we probably won’t come down on the same side of this, but I think we need to take an objective view about the location of the site and its proximity to other parts of our community. I think a Downtown General zone on the edge of your neighborhood will turn out to be an asset, promoting things like trail connections, a neighborhood park, and shops within walking distance.

You said yourself that a mixed-use development of businesses and residential would probably be ok, and that’s exactly what we’ve outlined in the 2025 plan. If you look at the area now, there’s a lot of commercial, and no residential. There aren’t any trails and it’s big and barren.

It needs to be changed. The whole border between the Mill district and your neighborhood needs to be changed, because it’s 100% heavy commercial now, and it needs to be lighter.

I think this zoning is a step in the right direction, and I don’t think a Neighborhood Conservation zoning will facilitate the changes the area surrounding that intersection needs to change. Neighborhood Conservation is for protecting the cores of our neighborhoods. Downtown General is for making sure they’re not isolated from everything else.

This is what another city council member said to me: “The city will have little control over the shape, style, density, etc. of what goes in there and will also have little to say about traffic calming if it is rezoned DG.”

But you’re wrong about the designs they’ve already showed you. We simply don’t allow designs like that to be built in Downtown General, and if they haven’t already made significant changes, they will soon if this is passed.

And as Kit informed us, we can’t consider anything a developer says as being reliable unless it’s provided contractually in writing. I think the examples you provide emphasize that, and we are being skeptical of Campus Crest.

If this is approved, I hope the developers will go the extra mile to build something Fayetteville finds extraordinary, instead of ticky tacky.

I don’t think that the complex will be approved, even if the zoning is approved.

I have confidence that this new council will stop rubber stamping large complexes. Since this is form-based zoning, it will be next to impossible for a “complex” to be approved, unless the city council ignores its own zoning classifications.

If this developer wants to build here, they will have to rethink their normal floor plans to fit the requirements of DG.

I hope they buy the land, the sale barn guy gets his $. Then they refuse to budge on their design, get denied, then sell the land at a lower price to a better local developer. Everybody wins, except the out of town developer. :)

Maybe its just my street, but none of my homeowner neighbors are a-holes. I wouldn’t call my student neighbors a-holes, either. Just more prone to making noise that I can hear inside my house once in a while. That was also true of the latino construction workers before them, who were in the same 18-25 age bracket.

I have no idea what kind of music my homeowner neighbors like, but my younger neighbors, I know.

Stereotypes don’t usually work, but they don’t invent themselves, either.

My other homeowning neighbor keeps her dogs fenced in but doesn’t show them attention so they never stop barking.

And yet I’m a renter, and I can’t tell you how many neighbors have approached me and thanked me for turning our run down yard into a garden.

New homeowning neighbors moved in across the corner and dropped f-bombs for three hours late last night on their porch.

None of my neighbors are students.

Do I live in an alternate universe?

Nobody said that.

I said that some of those things have happened, and they have all been the doing of students or “young people”. Thats a fact. Be offended if you want to. Its not 35 year olds with families who speed down my street blasting Lil Wayne at 11 pm.

The transient nature of college students makes them less considerate neighbors on average. That has been my experience, and it was true about me and my contemporaries when I was a college student myself.

To be fair, though, I have an adult neighbor who seems to let his dog loose every single day to **** in my yard.

But other than that, most of my adult, home-owning neighbors are practically invisible to me, as I am to them. Its natural to be more considerate of people who share a boundary with you and the property you spent $150k buying.

Its not as simple as ending a lease and finding a new roommate to leave “if you don’t like it” and thats exactly why there’s a difference in how homeowners behave vs. how renters behave, on average.

I’m sure my college-aged neighbors consider themselves to be exemplary neighbors, who only get “loud and drunk once in a while”. I agree with them for the most part.

Its that “once in a while” of showing disregard and disrespect for my peace and quiet and my property rights that separates them from the rest of my neighbors.

Thats all it takes.

You’ll understand when you get old, too.

It is preposterous to say that the “bad apples” in the student community outnumber the ones who exhibit good citizenship, proper residential etiquette, and consideration to their neighbors.

As I stated in the letter, my natural inclination is to oppose upsetting the historic nature of the national cemetery with a residential rezoning. However, as the city must do and as we as citizens must do, there should be absolutely no consideration given to who would be living in said residences. The city should do what is best for the city. End of story.

But you go too far when you claim that a majority of students fall into the disruptive, “bad neighbor” category. You are at your leisure to label “frat boys” and “sorority girls” as part of the problem (although I don’t necessarily agree), but considering Greeks make up somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of our student body, the claim that most students exhibit the behaviors that you attribute to them doesn’t really hold water.

Again, I take serious offense at this claim that somehow students are overwhelmingly Bluto-like, bass-thumping alcoholics that have nothing better to do than leave their beer cans on your front lawn and knock over your mailbox. We live in a college town. As I pointed out before, this comes with the assumption that Fridays are going to be a little louder, traffic is going to be a little rougher, and the football games that bring millions of dollars in revenue to our town are going to be logistical nightmares for getting anywhere in the city.

As for the complaints you offer about college students, there are an equal number that we have about the non-student population. We don’t like it that you drive below the speed limit. We don’t like it that you let your kids yell in a restaurant when we’re trying to enjoy a meal, or play in the middle of the street, or cross through our yards to meet their friends. We don’t like it when your yard sale puts a dozen strangers’ cars blocking entrance to our neighborhoods and our driveways.

And we definitely don’t like it that your lawn mower wakes us up at 7am on a Saturday morning.

But we are neighbors, and those are the facts of life. If you are prejudiced against the living standards of college students, don’t live near them. But our tax dollars and our presence in this community are part of the lifeblood of Fayetteville, our home for at least four years and maybe more.

Fayetteville is a diverse city, and that diversity is increased by the students who give the University of Arkansas life, and make our town vibrant and active. I think anyone who considers students among the “worst neighbors possible” needs to do some serious questioning of what kind of community we are fostering.