Out of FOCUS

The city council ignores the multiyear effort to create a citywide strategic development plan
When David Dobbins and his family moved into their home in a semirural area of the Northland, they expected development to move their way. "To move out here and believe development was never going to make it this far would have been foolish," Dobbins says. "There's just no way that all this was going to remain like it was."

His home is a modern two-story at the end of a long gravel driveway. Although Dobbins can't see many of his neighbors from his house, a short drive north on Staley to Hardesty and up to 108th Street reveals homes nestled in forest and along streams. Some stand alone in suburban-style squares of green grass. All of the houses are different, built at different times and reflecting the dreams and wishes of their owners.

Dobbins takes a sweeping look at what spreads out around him -- and soon will be gone. To the west, grazing land grows prairie grass punctuated with aging farm buildings. Hardwood groves stand on the top of hills and in the valley where North Staley Road winds through. An old barbed-wire fence defines Dobbins' property to the north along a shaggy hedge of mulberry, Virginia creeper, and tall bluestem. Beyond lies a tangle of young trees, rife with ivy, brush, and a stand of sassafras.

But nature will soon take a beating. The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council recently approved Pine Grove, a 365-acre, 799-home development that may bring 2,400 people to the area. Behind Dobbins' home is open ground, extending down a long hill into woods and fields to I-435, then to the rolling hills beyond. Pine Grove will fill the space from his property north and east to the interstate.

Dobbins is less concerned with how he feels about the encroachment upon property than with how the Northland is developed. "I have been an electrical engineer all my professional life, over 15 years," he says. "I have worked on scores of buildings. We knew when we moved out here three years ago that development would happen. The problem is that the city and over 3,000 volunteers spent several years developing the FOCUS report, and now they (city council members) are not following it."

The FOCUS (Forging Our Comprehensive Urban Strategy) Kansas City Plan, a stack of volumes more than a foot and a half high, recommends that quality of growth over amount of growth be the overriding factor in citizens' and the city's determination of what development occurs. The Northland Plan section of FOCUS recommends that the city encourage diversity of mixed-income, mixed-use development with attention to transportation, economic development, and existing community. With regard to transportation, FOCUS recommends developing along existing infrastructure rather than building new and wider roads typical to suburban development on vacant land. Dobbins points out that even after a decade of steady growth, almost 75 percent of vacant land within the city limits is north of the Missouri River.

Just two roads lead into Pine Grove: Hardesty from the south and Staley Road (the proposed Shoal Creek Parkway) on the west. Both are narrow and shoulderless. Hardesty forms the frontage road for I-435. Staley winds through the hills, woods, and open fields. Both roads are studded with one-lane bridges.

"Part of FOCUS is to make sure that the existing topography, identity of properties, open spaces, and development be paid attention to," Dobbins says. "Pine Grove doesn't do any of that. It is a large, traditional suburban development in a leapfrog fashion that has no buffers, no transportation element, and doesn't preserve much of anything.

"FOCUS was not a priority to the city council when they approved the plan. If they don't follow it here, it's going to be tough to do it elsewhere."

Dobbins says he was chosen as the de facto leader for the Staley Farms Neighborhood Association. He testified before the City Council Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development Committee, which recommended Pine Grove to the full council. He then testified before the city council in the general vote on the plan. Despite his professional, considered presentations, Dobbins says, both times he was met with "outright indifference" on the part of city council members, particularly at-large councilmembers Bonnie Sue Cooper and Teresa Loar. Videotapes of the May 3 Planning and Zoning hearing and the May 31 city council meeting reveal Loar and Cooper's impatience with Dobbins' testimony. "Everything about Cooper those days was discouraging," Dobbins says. "She was angry some of the time; other times she repeated she 'had heard all of this before.' Her whole body language, eye rolling, and demeanor indicated we were not going to get anywhere."

In an interview, Cooper says the council listened "to those people five times, and we heard the same thing over and over. I think they were just snatching and clutching at straws. Then they brought up that we were not adhering to FOCUS and that the development was leapfrog.

"Well, I can tell you if we deny every project just on this kind of (FOCUS) consideration, you are going to stop all development. FOCUS is not the law. How do you determine leapfrog? You fit places into areas already zoned for the project. You can't get into the developer's private business and tell them what to do. You can't do every project out north as mixed-use, not in the vast expanse of land up here."