For the week of August 6 - 12, 2003

Thumbs up on Pineridge

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It’s time for Ketchum’s leaders to put their votes where their mouths are.

Each member of the Ketchum Planning and Zoning Commission and the City Council has said he or she supports development of community housing for working people whose annual incomes don’t register in the millions.

Yet, the city has rejected plan after plan for community housing, with two small exceptions—The Fields at Warm Springs, and a handful of units south of town.

The city has another chance to make good on what look more and more like hollow promises.

Pineridge, a 32-unit development with 13 units of community housing, is proposed on more than two acres now occupied by the old defunct Heidelberg motel on Warm Springs Road.

Pineridge’s density is similar to other residential developments in the same area

Like The Fields, Pineridge is perfectly situated on the KART line and next to the city’s new bike path.

Opponents are dragging out the same tired arguments used against the Fields, most of them wrong.

The Fields wasn’t too dense. It didn’t reduce the value of adjacent properties. Its cars didn’t clog Warm Springs Road.

Neither will Pineridge.

Pineridge meets city requirements for density in a planned unit development, height and open space. It’s tasteful and well-designed.

What’s not to like? It’s exactly the win-win kind of private development the city has said repeatedly that it wants.

Yet, two P&Z commissioners who live near it claim the Pineridge design is insensitive and not in harmony with the area.

One neighboring project contains higher densities. Another stares at the Heidelberg’s bare cinderblock firewall. Pineridge, on the other hand, contains well landscaped buffers and setbacks.

Insensitive? Hardly.

Ketchum needs the housing, and Pineridge would be a credit to the neighborhood. P&Z should give it thumbs up.

 

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