This and that: West Lafayette parking study called for
City council member says it’s time to get a handle on West Lafayette parking. Purdue addresses ‘what if’ in Ball State’s firing of employee for Charlie Kirk comments. And the Dining Divas on Kinn Thai
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Yes, another this and that edition …
PARKING STUDY CALLED FOR IN WEST LAFAYETTE: A West Lafayette City Council member said Wednesday she will call for a study of parking in the city, as well as at and around Purdue’s campus.
Stacey Burr told the Joint Board, an advisory board made up of city and Purdue representatives, that she was hoping to get a better inventory of parking of various kinds in the city, similar to a study started this summer to get a grip on the makeup of owner-occupied and rental housing in R1/single-family residential zones. (See: “New maps show spread of rentals in single-family neighborhoods in West Lafayette,” Bil, Oct. 7)
Burr said she planned to call for the study at the city council’s Nov. 3 meeting. At Wednesday’s Joint Board meeting, Burr called on Purdue to take part, given that the city and campus needs overlapped so much.
“For developers, a parking space is probably not really interesting – just an economic asset,” Burr said after Wednesday’s Joint Board meeting. “But I think we just don’t have a good sense of what is the state of parking and the need for it, short term, medium term, long term. When I listen to developers talk about how we’re building units for the next 50 years, for the next 100 years, we really don’t know what the next 50 or 100 years are going to be looking like. We just want to get a handle on it, just like we didn’t know what the R1 housing situation was in West Lafayette and we’re working to get a handle on that.”
The move comes as questions have cropped up recently about the adequacy of parking spaces included in proposed developments, West Lafayette this year installing metered parking on some city streets and changes in parking and transportation on campus.
The move also would land the same night scheduled to consider a rezoning request for Chauncey Annex, a proposed 15-story complex on the northeast corner of State Street and Chauncey Avenue.
The mixed-use planned development proposal from Texas-based LV Collective won an 11-4 recommendation Oct. 15 from the Area Plan Commission. But city council members on the APC raised questions about the scale and location of the project, along with doubts about a parking allotment that would provide spaces for about 17% of the 800-plus beds in the project. The city council is expected to get a final say on the rezoning at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 3 at city hall, 222 N. Chauncey Ave.
This summer, West Lafayette also added metered parking for parts of State Street, Brown Street, Airport Road and the Discovery Park District just west of Purdue’s campus, along with streets in the university’s “Island” between residence halls and the main campus in a conversion from timed parking limits to paid parking through the ParkMobile online app.
“We’d like to understand what is the state of parking – paid parking, metered parking, residential parking, free parking, on-street in residential neighborhoods, etc. – so we can develop a point of view as it relates to developments coming in,” Burr said. “What should we be requesting from the developers regarding the ratio of units to parking lot spaces?”
AFTER BALL STATE/CHARLIE KIRK CASE, PURDUE ANSWERS: WHAT IF … ON MATTERS OF SPEECH: It’s been more than a month since a Ball State employee was fired – and then sued – for comments she made on a private social media page in the wake of the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
This week, Purdue officials responded to faculty members who have been asking, in a nutshell: What would have happened in a similar situation on the West Lafayette campus?
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