01/29/2007 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Regular Council Meeting 1-29-07 Page 7 how costly greenspace really can be. We have a picture in the back and I have color coded it. You have seen before the greenway map that we have, which is to depict the trail, the linear paxk system that we want to make that connects the center of town up to the Metroparks. The yellow is all commercial zoning, the blue is residential and then of course blue and yellow make green, the greenway is the meeting point of those. But most of the land that Mayfield Village has purchased over the last 14 years has largely been in the yellow area. There is a lot of corporate zoned land that we have purchased along with other undeveloped land. A lot of what we have tried to do is buy land strategically to expand our park system, to be able to control development. This building, we spent two million dollars for this when we knew that the Methodist Church was moving out. At the time we were not necessarily sure what we were going to do, but I think we can all agree that we have managed to find some pretty good usefulness for this facility. We will continue to work on that. We are looking to make some improvements in the sanctuary area. But I think what we've learned is that as we move along almost incrementally, we can make some very dramatic changes in the existing structure. We have had to put some money back into the bones of this facility but at the end of the day we know that it will be a showpiece. It will be a beautiful foyer. We plan to do work on the main foyer, the main entryway and the sanctuary this year. I would expect within the next two to three years, we will find that the overall structure will be something that people will be very proud of. As it is, I think we are all very proud of it now. Regarding North Commons Boulevard, running between the pool all the way up to White Road, the cost of improvement there was just over $4.5 million. The S.O.M. Center Road project is just over $17 million when all is said and done. I wanted to highlight those things because I think that it is important for us to recognize that a lot of the strategies we have employed have been to preserve the sense of place that we have, yet be able to address a lot of the changes that have gone on. I know I have talked about this before, but when you look at the Northwest Quadrant of the Village alone, an area of over 300 acres that was largely undeveloped, that was probably the last best place on the I-271 corridor. All you have to do is look around the Greater Cleveland area. Places like that come in to play and all of a sudden whole controversies can ignite over land-use battles between citizens that suddenly realize that there is someone who wants to develop this and make a major change. We made some major changes there to be sure, but I think when you look at the outcome and with the advent of Campus III, if things go as we intend them to go, out of that 300 acres, close to 150 aci-es will remain largely undeveloped or will be passively developed as either recreational facilities, active or passive recreational facilities with the intention being that we are able to derive top benefit from the commercial land that fronts there on 271, but yet otherwise we are able to enjoy a lot of the adjacent land.