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New Bryan Comprehensive Plan


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From the City of Bryan Comprehensive Plan home page:

Cities typically update their plans every 5 to 10 years depending on growth in the community. The City of Bryan entered into a contract in October of 2005 with IPS Group, a planning consulting firm, to manage the update process. Mitchell & Morgan LLP., a civil engineering firm is also on the project and will be working on transportation and utility issues.

The Bryan City Council appointed an Advisory Committee (CPAC) to oversee this year-long process. There are 21 members of the community that meet monthly with the consulting team and city staff to discuss issues and formulate solutions.

The planning process will include a large amount of public involvement. The public involvement plan includes 2 days of Focus Group meetings, 4 "Town" meetings held in different areas of the community in April and 2 Open Houses that will be held this summer / fall. There will also be 2 public hearings, one before the Planning & Zoning Commission and one before the City Council in November / December.

To date there have been 12 focus group meetings involving interests from housing, transportation, schools, community appearance, economic development, neighborhood associations, the Hispanic and African American communities and the downtown area.

The updated plan will include revisions to each chapter reflecting the latest information as well as incorporation of the most recently updated Parks Master Plan into the document. There will also be an Implementation section outlining changes to various development codes and a list of capital improvement projects for future bond elections.

Upcoming Community Meetings

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From the City of Bryan Comprehensive Plan home page:

This is pretty interesting, though I imagine it will change a lot before anything actually happens. If you go to the home page, then the "draft plan", then presentation number 4 (i.e. HERE), you'll see maps for proposed future land use and transportation. Most interesting to me are the proposed roads, including a very large outer loop around Bryan and College Station. There's still an annoying lack of higher-speed East-West roads, though it looks like Highway 21 might be upgraded to higher speed in the plan.

I'll try to go to one of the meetings, to see what more they have to say.

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This is pretty interesting, though I imagine it will change a lot before anything actually happens. If you go to the home page, then the "draft plan", then presentation number 4 (i.e. HERE), you'll see maps for proposed future land use and transportation. Most interesting to me are the proposed roads, including a very large outer loop around Bryan and College Station. There's still an annoying lack of higher-speed East-West roads, though it looks like Highway 21 might be upgraded to higher speed in the plan.

I'll try to go to one of the meetings, to see what more they have to say.

It looks like they are including College Station a lot better these days in their plan. I remember seeing the roadway plan a few years ago that had them turning University Dr E in a Northerly direction and connecting to Harvey Mitchel North. Essentially creating a loop ignoring College Station's existence.

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I still think extending University to 21 (and maybe someday connecting all the way to Harvey Mitchell) makes more sense, at least the way current growth is occuring.

What I do not understand is the total lack of effort to create a viable east-west roadway between Villa-Maria/Briarcrest and Hwy. 21. It would take some work, but I think this town needs a smooth transition from Leonard/Groesbeck to Coulter to far East Villa Maria and/or MLK/Old Reliance. It is weird how Bryan has an abundance of major north-south roads and highways, and College Station has great east-west access, but Bryan lacks adequate east-west transpotation and College Station continually struggles with north-south movement.

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FYI:

B/CS Growth and Traffic Symposium April 4th, 2006:

NOT LIKE AUSTIN?!

PLANNING FOR BRAZOS COUNTY GROWTH AND ASSOCIATED VEHICULAR TRAFFIC: SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF OTHER TEXAS CITIES AND UNIVERSITY COMMUNITIES

A community symposium and forum sponsored by the BUSINESS AND LAND DEVELOPMENT FORUM, in association with the BRAZOS CHAPTER OF THE TEXAS SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS and the BRAZOS BRANCH OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS

When:

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

4:15 pm to 6:45 pm

(come and go as you please)

College Station Conference Center

1300 George Bush Drive

College Station, Texas

Open to all interested members of our community.

For additional information

please contact Larry Haskins at

(979) 696-1444 or bcstxlaw@aol.com

Featured Speakers:

John S. Jacob, Ph.D.,

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I'll try to go to one of the meetings, to see what more they have to say.

I went to the first of the community meetings. There were only about 20 people there, plus about 10 from the city/consultants. I believe they had expected many more, though this was the evening of the NCAA championship game. The meeting was pretty interesting, but was mainly an opportunity to express opinions, rather than for them to present information. There was a 15 minute presentation (really general)followed by a breakout into (three) groups of 8-10 people each, where the topics of discussion were basically "what do you think could be improved in Bryan" (along with "what do you like best about Bryan, currently). It was certainly easy to get your opinion heard. There was some discussion of transportation, but not in any detail - they indicated that the image in the presentation is just a working plan, and seemed reluctant to discuss specifics of road locations, though they did discuss general ideas (e.g. the outer loop).

The one factor they said was a common complaint among every group and every focus group they have talked to was the issue of code enforcement/community appearance. A fair amount of our group discussion focused on this, also.

Like I said, it was useful. They said that they also document all the comments that come in by email, so even if you can't attend one of the other 3 meetings, you might consider commenting that way.

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Is that black dotted line the Bryan city limit? It looks like they are trying to surround College Station even more than the last time I saw the boundary map. They should just stay on their side of University Drive and worry about all the problems the city already has instead of expanding into land that would more logically fit in CS.

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That black dotted line is Bryan's ETJ, not the current city limits. The ETJs near C.S. were negotiated between the cities years ago, so Bryan will develop quite a bit south of Univerity Dr., east of 158/30. If you don't like the look of the future of Bryan, you would die to know how much land is under the realm of BISD. In the future, if full development of the land in question occurs, about a fifth of College Station residents would live in a Bryan I.S.D attendance zone.

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That black dotted line is Bryan's ETJ, not the current city limits. The ETJs near C.S. were negotiated between the cities years ago, so Bryan will develop quite a bit south of Univerity Dr., east of 158/30. If you don't like the look of the future of Bryan, you would die to know how much land is under the realm of BISD. In the future, if full development of the land in question occurs, about a fifth of College Station residents would live in a Bryan I.S.D attendance zone.

Wow, that's ridiculous. It's strange that there are two school districs that formed so close to each other in the first place. The cities of Cypress and Fairbanks were a lot further from each other than Bryan and College Station and they managed to get it right from the start. It seems like it would be a good idea for them to combine, but that'll never happen.

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That black dotted line is Bryan's ETJ, not the current city limits. The ETJs near C.S. were negotiated between the cities years ago, so Bryan will develop quite a bit south of Univerity Dr., east of 158/30.

This was one of the topics brought up at the meeting. By this agreement, Bryan can annex (and already has) much of the East side of 158/30. However, College Station has not annexed, and has no short-term plans to annex, its side - evidently there is some problem with them extending sewer access into that area (that side of the flood plain, I gather) or something. As a result, there are no city codes on that side of the street. Although at the meeting several Bryan folks felt like it would be worth upgrading that part of 158, it was seen as somewhat pointless as long as College Station didn't annex "their" side.

Also brought up was that there would be a problem extending sewer lines East of (I think it was) where Copperfield drive hits Briarcrest (I don't think it's still called Briarcrest at that point, but you get the idea), having something to do with the slope of the land. Evidently Bryan would have to put in some sort of major sewer system infrastructure over there in order to start developing that area more extensively.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Very well attended meeting. Someone in the small groups we broke into discussed the Municipal Golf Course. I wish I had been in that group, as I neglected to mention it and the group I was in focused WAY too much time on drainage issues.

All in all, I am hopeful that the coprehensive plan will be visionary yet practical. The IPS group seemed on top of things and it seemed to me they are looking for a signature issue for the plan, as they mentioned the last Comprehensive Plan helped spur Downtown redevelopment. If I to venture a guess, I would say that ideas to adresss the decay along Texas Ave., north of Villa Maria, will be a focus of the plan.

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  • 4 months later...

The draft of the new comprehensive plan has been released. There will be community meetings tonight and tomorrow at the Brazos Center for those interested in giving feedback. I won't be able to go, but I'd be interested to hear any reports if someone else is able to make it. The draft and the community meeting information can be found at:

http://www.goodlifetexasstyle.com

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I hope to make it by today or tomorrow...

The "Draft Plan" from the website looks to just be a few portions and it has not been updated in many weeks. I was hoping to be able to read the entire plan piece by piece while it was being prepared, but I was happy to be able to read what was posted to the site.

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  • 2 months later...

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