Mike McKeever: Curtis Park Village proposal is Blueprint to the future

By Andrea Rosen
Viewpoint Staff Writer

Viewpoint continues its occasional series featuring Curtis Park land use professionals and their perspectives on the proposed Curtis Park Village. Our focus is on the planned land uses, design and circulation plans of the proposed development slated to incorporate 239 single family units, 310 multi-family units, five acres of park space and 14 acres of commercial uses.

This month we feature the perspective of Mike McKeever, executive director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and formerly the project manager for the Sacramento Blueprint Project.

The recently adopted Blueprint Preferred Scenario is slated to be at the center of Sacramento's future. And a key creative force behind that plan is Cutter Way neighbor Mike McKeever. As executive director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), Mike previously served as the project manager overseeing the three-year Blueprint effort to come to terms with Sacramento's projected growth and development.

Mike has lived in Curtis Park with his wife Nancy and her two children Elizabeth and Tom, for the last four years - nearly the same time frame in which he worked with the broad cross section of business and political leaders as well as ordinary citizens - many of whom hailed from Curtis Park - to develop the vision for growth intended to guide land use and transportation choices for the region over the next 50 years.

Given the distinction, and many awards the Blueprint Project has garnered, the obvious question arises: How does the proposed Curtis Park Village development fare when analyzed under the Blueprint Preferred Scenario?

Recently Councilember Lauren Hammond requested an evaluation of the proposed Curtis Park Village development using the software and measurements of the Blueprint Preferred Scenario. As SACOG's executive director, Mike and his staff undertook that analysis. In March, he sent a letter to Hammond outlining the technical results as well as his organization's recommended enhancements and considerations of the proposal.

Mike concluded that overall, the proposed site plan outperforms the Blueprint Preferred Scenario.
"We congratulate the City of Sacramento and the applicant on such a good site plan," the letter stated.

Mike emphasizes that the projected population growth for the region's six counties and 22 cities, which is expected to reach over 3.8 million people -- up from the current 2 million -- should be an impetus for decision-makers to call for development patterns that focus compactly inward rather than sprawl outward.

Mike stresses that from a regional perspective, it is very important to develop the Curtis Park Village site correctly, especially given its proximity to a light rail line. Mike likes the proposed mix of uses and is particularly supportive of the multi-family component near transit.

In his SACOG letter, he advocates for four potential enhancements to the site plan. One is to add more attached housing particularly in the mixed-use area. He also asks for consideration of structured parking as well as a more urban design for the employment and mixed-use centers. And he wants the option for a pedestrian/bike bridge preserved if cost precludes its construction concurrent with the main development.

"One of the biggest impediments to building a good neighborhood is treating the intersection level trip analysis and even trip counts on neighborhood streets as the most important factor in judging the merits of a proposed plan," he says. While he understands why neighborhoods have latched onto traffic battles in the past as the only way to counter bad development proposals, he believes that design should trump counting cars as the key concern for the Curtis Park neighborhood.

"The issue is not the number of cars, it's how the cars are forced to behave," said Mike. "The goal of driving cars away is a bad idea because it leads you to the wrong conclusion and because it drives the people away. I don't want cut-through traffic either, but this can be controlled by design."

As such, he encourages continuation of the existing grid travel pattern by incorporating Fifth Avenue and Donner Way extensions of Site Option 1 and the 10th Ave extension of Site Option 2.

Even though Curtis Park is close to retail, it doesn't have much retail that is truly integrated within the neighborhood, notes Mike. Local residents will benefit from closer access to a major grocery store and other retail amenities making for fewer and shorter vehicle trips, he believes.

"I hope Curtis Park neighbors will demand design of the commercial area that honors the pedestrian since this will create a true urban-oriented project that will be an enhancement to the existing neighborhood," he said.

Mike notes that while typically 15-20% of car trips are from home to work and back, a full 80-85% are for shopping, school, day care, entertainment and recreational trips.

"Because our region has limited capability to build new roads, we have to find a way to make smaller scale neighborhoods, such as ours, more self-sustaining," said Mike.

He entreats neighbors to exert influence on the developer and the city to get the design and architecture of the retail right and make sure it's integrated into the neighborhood to give it more of an urban feeling.

Selling the lots to individual builders is very important, he believes. Mike worries about large scale retailers who often have cookie cutter requirements such as large surface parking lots, but thinks the proposed Curtis Park Village can be done differently. He points to a new Safeway that was recently built in downtown Portland which included structured parking and housing on top.

The Blueprint modeled the Curtis Park Village development with and without a pedestrian bridge to the light rail station at City College and concluded that it made a modest positive difference in pedestrian/ bike trips. Mike laments the frustratingly high cost, which he believes should not be borne by the developer alone.

As for his part as SACOG's executive director, Mike is committed to seeking future funding to add the bridge and hoped the city would require the developer to reserve a space for it. He believes a study to assess pooling funds from SACOG, City College, Regional Transit and the developer is in order, but meanwhile the pedestrian/ bike bridge option should not be foreclosed.

Readers are encouraged to look at site proposals for the proposed Curtis Park Village on www.curtisparkvillage.net and at www.sacregionblueprint.org/sacregionblueprint/ to learn more about the Blueprint Preferred Scenario.

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