Families living in Western Independence have reason to celebrate!
The private developer who had wanted to take a local piece of property that directly bordered a residential area… will have to shop elsewhere for land.
The people living in that residential area dropped what they were doing and rose to the defense of their families. They expressed their opposition to this development to the developer’s lawyer, to their friends and neighbors, and to public officials.
Now, let’s give the developer a bit of credit:
1) He wisely identified some cheap land with low property values that has terrific access to I-435 and a central artery of Independence (23rd street).
2) He offered a public meeting the Saturday before this issue was to go to the Planning Commission. (I have spoken with somebody who fights private prison developments nationwide…and he said for a developer to have such a meeting is highly-unusual and is very respectful to the people.)
3) He withdrew his application (for rezoning and the special-use permit) before it went to the Planning Commission.
4) He could have been much more nastier and pushy about all of this.
However, that said, the developer’s lawyer made statements that were unnecessary. After hearing the opposition, the lawyer said that his client would be likely to put in 240 units of Section 8 (HUD) housing. This scared a lot of people.
And, after withdrawing the proposal, the lawyer then repeated that Section 8 housing threat, saying that development would begin once the snow melted. (He also referred to the neighborhood in a rather nasty way, pointing out how many drive-by shootings had supposedly happened in it in the past year.)
This is all unnecessary hog-wash. I believe all of those statements were made for two reasons:
1) To draw attention away from the fact that this was a victory for the neighborood and a loss for this developer and his lawyer.
2) To draw attention away from the fact that this developer is still “shopping” for a place to put a prison. As such, he doesn’t want public attention. He doesn’t want people to think he’s still looking.
The fact that they tried to push this through Independence DURING AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER CHRISTMAS suggests they deliberately did this in order to attract minimal attention from the public. They wanted this to sneak on in!
But once the public was tipped-off (thanks to a lot of folks who are active in the “Neighbors of Winner Road Association”)… they had to act respectable. And, once losing, they had to express “sour grapes” and hope maybe they can slip off into the darkness and go sneak their prison in somewhere else.
Congratulations, people of Independence! We’ve defended our families from yet another threat!
And THANK YOU to all the wonderful people of Blue Summit and Independence who came together to get-the-word-out on this issue…and who fought to resist it!
