Diana,
After reading your blog, I felt very disappointed. Ridgemont is trying their best to save their neighborhood from New Urbanism, 7 story high rises, now we are told 8 story high rises in our neighborhood. Yes, we did fight for our neighborhood that night but one has to understand that our neighborhood is unprotected from development. We are faced with prior campaign donations made to officials, a development that was never initially introduced to the community, and threats "take it our leave it" by the developer or there will be buildings built there! Also, in reference to the comment about fighting for our quality of life, yes, our quality of life might not equal someone in a high income neighborhood but our quality of life includes safe streets, air and light quality, and a quiet neighborhood where children play. We value the simple qualities of life and should not be mocked on our lifestyles that we chose or can afford. The threat of quality of life changes from the development would implement dangerous health, safety, traffic and noise issues. Also, there was very intelligent comments made by our neighborhood such as the developer not committing to water and sewage service that they intially said Green Tree would cover, and now Green Tree is facing financial troubles for providing sewage and water to their residents. Pittsburgh residents did not want them to hook up to our lines due to our current problems, and we do not want our taxes to increase.
Also, we mentioned how Green Tree was approved for a zoning change with a general variance change without properly notifying Ridgemont residents, and that some residents live within 50 feet from the property. Also, we submitted an important performance bond to Southstar and DeLorenzo Development so the proposed development City Vista would be have to complete the project if it is approved, pay for any damages to land bordering project, and they are obligated to pay wages owed to any union or non-uniom workers and materials. For you see, Ridgemont residents are not crazy as the blog sounded, we are not up here in farmer jeans chewing on a piece of straw. We are passionate, intelligent, and we are fighting for our lives against in my opinion, a development that will be very detrimental to our lives and safety of our neighborhood! I want to thank you Diana for taking your night off to sit through hours of dialog, I wish the meeting could have been peaceful! But, when we still have unanswered questions, changing answers from last July, one has to think...is this a honest endeavor?
I thought Johana Murphy did a wonderful job, she was faced with people who had their emotions bottled up for 8 months. I want to thank our City Councilwoman Theresa Smith for allowing us the opportunity for a meeting. She has only been in office for 4 weeks. This meeting should have been taken place last July!
Thank You,
ChickenHill Chic