Many Olympian questions remain
After more than a decade of planning, Olympian Drive has a chance of being completed now that State and Federal funding might be in place. In April of this year, both the City of Urbana and the City of Champaign councils voted in favor of an intergovernmental agreement for the design of Olympian Drive to be paid for with a $5,000,000 grant from the State of Illinois. Since then, political tension has steadily increased.
What makes this topic very interesting to me is that the political tension escalated to a level where the Mayor of Urbana decided to personally attack a small business owner, her business, and her clientele over a political disagreement. Until I read that, I thought Olympian Drive was a done deal if the funding came through. If Mayor Prussing feels it is necessary to discredit a goat farmer because of her business model, apparently there is more to this story than I initially assumed. As a self-diagnosed political junkie, I immediately wanted to learn more.
I've been trying to answer the following questions:
- Is it necessary to complete Olympian Drive?
- Will completing Olympian Drive create jobs?
- Are the benefits worth the costs?
- Is it feasible?
It has not been easy to get straight answers to these questions. In fact, I'm still trying to get answers. There have been many valid arguments on both sides of the debate, but it has been easy to get distracted by all the posturing and name-calling. Since I am still unable to answer the most basic questions about Olympian Drive, here are some observations that I thought you might find interesting:
Regional Planning Commission Project Overview: http://www.ccrpc.org/olympiandrive/index.php.
1) City of Urbana Projections:
If you want a better idea of how our community can benefit from extending Olympian Drive, the City of Urbana presented three scenarios in this memorandum dated April 12, 2010. According to the most conservative of the three scenarios in this memo, there will be 3000-4000 jobs created within 25 years and the proposed development area will be approximately 50% developed. If the Apollo industrial subdivision in Champaign, according to city staff in the April 20th Regular Council Meeting, developed 155 of a possible 500 acres over approximately 20 years, how can Urbana expect to develop 510 of 940 acres within 25 years as outlined in the Limited Build Out scenario? On the other hand, this memo only discussed property tax revenues and did not take into account the full economic benefits that new investment and wages could bring to the region.
2) Magic Fairy Dust: On April 20th, Marci Dodds presented a very interesting argument against extending Olympian Drive.
3) Do Good Consulting: Several land owners and the Goat Lady herself hired Laura Huth from Do Good Consulting for public relations. To learn more about Do Good Consulting, you can visit their website here. People often hire experts to represent them (lawyers, real estate agents, accountants) and it is good to know there is a local expert who is willing to represent small business owners and land owners in political matters.
4) Vector Communications: The City of Urbana hired Vector Communications to perform public relations public engagement services. This move has drawn criticism because this firm is based out of St. Louis, Missouri and they are being paid with money from an Illinois Jobs Now! grant. You can review the proposal (pdf) outlining the services Vector will provide the City of Urbana along with their fee schedule (Excel file).
5) Facebook Pages: If you get a chance, check out the Facebook pages Stop Olympian Drive Group (586 fans) and I Support Completing Olympian Drive in Champaign County (318 fans). Of course the number fans might have changed by the time this article is published. Either way, reading the posts on both group pages is very interesting.
6) Pac-Man: Allegedly, you can make out a Pac-Man shape when you look at aerials of Champaign County. The argument is that by completing Olympian Drive, growth will be more concentrated instead of pushing new development further outwards and eliminate the Pac-Man effect. At the very least, check out the cool map features on the City of Champaign website and see if you can make out the Pac-Man.
7) Goat Lady: Just in case you missed it, the Chicago Tribune wrote an interesting article about the Olympian Drive project. "If they want to go live someplace else and dig roots and pick berries," says the mayor, "they can go and live someplace else."
8) Stakeholders: If companies and investors were investing in the community based on widely-accepted plans to complete Olympian Drive, wouldn't it be unfair to change the plans after they have made investments? I was not around in 1997, so it is a fair to assume these plans were widely-accepted?
9) Not For Sale: According to a post on the I Support Completing Olympian Drive in Champaign facebook page, "Fact: there are 8 land owners affected with only 4 opposed. The other 4 stand firmly behind the project." I suppose this could read that those in favor of the project do not include a majority of landowners. If there are "only" four opposed, couldn't you also argue that there are "only" four in favor? Could we also say that those opposed are "firmly" opposed just like those who are "firmly" in favor? I consistently hear accusations from those in favor of Olympian Drive that the other side is engaged in spin. From what I can tell, the pot is calling the kettle black.
10) The Compromise: There is a counter proposal to connect Lincoln Ave. directly with Olympian Drive rather than extend the road all the way to Route 45. This seems to accommodate most of the project goals and the wishes of the land owners who do not want to sell. According to this memo (pdf), it is a viable option. Since the County Board doesn't appear to be favor of extending Olympian Drive to Rt. 45, it might the only feasible option at the end of the day. While the compromise proposal to connect Lincoln with Olympian has not been widely discussed, Brendan McGinty supports it. He is important because he is the Chair of the Economic Development Council and a member of the Champaign County Board. Other members of the County Board are also in favor of the compromise proposal, including Alan Nudo, as reported by the News-Gazette, who believes there are many other board members who support connecting Olympian Drive directly with Lincoln.
Looking forward, it will be interesting to see if those in favor of completing Olympian Drive will entertain the compromise plan and work towards getting that done. If not, we'll have to see if the County Board will support extending Olympian Drive all the way to Rt. 45. In the meantime, if someone can help me answer my questions, I'd really appreciate it.
Eric Bussell is a commercial REALTOR® with Next Level Real Estate Brokers. He lives in Philo, Ill., where he serves as a Precinct Committeeman for the Champaign County Republican Party. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Junior Achievement of East Central Illinois. Be sure to visit Eric's new Halfway Interesting blog (www.halfwaytinteresting.com), launching August 15th.
12 comments
A learned a lot from this article. A really good analysis and way of approaching the issue.
Robert Knilands
“8) Stakeholders: If companies and investors were investing in the community based on widely-accepted plans to complete Olympian Drive, wouldn’t it be unfair to change the plans after they have made investments? I was not around in 1997, so it is a fair to assume these plans were widely-accepted?“
This is a dangerous philosophy. How many places do we have in the area where offices are sitting empty because of this type of decision-making?
WCIA had a decent report tonight about the local economy. At one point, a business owner said buildings are empty because banks won’t loan money for people to start businesses. So the buildings sit. And sit. Seems that more development of this type might not be the best idea.
Of course, the report featured the usual clinging to the University as the ultimate guardian against bad economics. People are soon going to have to realize they cannot keep falling back on that as a solution while funding declines.
Laura Huth
To Point #9 in the story: Affected landowners opposed to this project add up to more than 4: a minimum count shows Billy Zeigler, Virginia Zeigler, Gene Zeigler, Wes Jarrel, Janet Scharlau, Steve Grierson, Margaret Erlandson, as well as others. That’s definitely more than the 4 project supporters are claiming.
nunya
Wow. I’m having flashbacks to when the solution to flooding on campus was called “the big hole” and anyone who suggested improvements to drainage might create jobs and new building was ridiculed.
Or when Windsor was being upgraded into a four lanes across CU (which, I might add is just now being completed to Rt. 130) and people complained that it was ridiculous to upgrade a road “in the middle of nowhere because who the hell would build way out here anyway.“
Robert Knilands
You don’t need to have flashbacks, or even go far from Windsor, to see the empty buildings. People might have built “way out there,“ but a good chunk of it is unoccupied.
The previous example about Boneyard Creek is not the best example for new highways in undeveloped areas, unless you are saying Campustown should not have been built in a floodplain. Once that area was developed, though, drainage had to be improved.
Adding parking lots, stores, etc., does not improve the drainage of a previously undeveloped area.
Making policy because developers already have committed to a non-existing road being built is not a great way to do things.
Thank you to everyone for your comments.
Robert, I think it is a dangerous philosophy to set expectations with employers and not meet them. In the many informal conversations I’ve had about Olympian Drive, I’ve been told that (a) the businesses on North Lincoln made significant investment/reinvestment and (b) the businesses in the Apollo subdivision located there with the understanding that Olympian would be completed. While I have not been able to confirm this as fact, I think it is a very big deal. As you mentioned, we have plenty of empty buildings (and idle development ground) and it would be counter-productive if the community had a reputation for making false promises to potential employers.
Nunya, there are many infrastructure investments in our community that have made our community more attractive. Several years ago I moved to Urbana (just off Windsor) because I appreciated the E-W access the road provided. It allowed me to get to work on Fox Drive in less than 10 minutes. I am one of the one of the people who opened a business in campustown because I find the district attractive. That said, why is a potential employer going to choose to move to Olympian Drive in Urbana? Is the dig-ready ground in the Apollo subdivision not attractive or plentiful enough? Is the E-W access on I-74 not convenient enough?
Laura, the reference I made in #9 states that there are 8 landowners potentially affected. Is it possible to get a list of the landowners/families who are affected, where they stand, and how much acreage of the proposed development area they represent?
Thanks for offering this thorough review of the information, documentation, and varying opinions on this issue. Like most public issues it is not as simple as choosing between black and white. It is unfortunate when an issue becomes very polarizing and emotional, but the positive impact is that people start to pay attention.
I would like to point out that the plans for extending Olympian Drive have been around for a long time, updated regularly, and have been open for public review and comment as recently as last year when the Long Range Transportation Plan 2035 was updated, sent to each city for discussion and approval. http://www.ccrpc.org/transportation/lrtp2/index.html Prior to the update last year the Long Range Transportation Plan 2025 was approved in 2004. http://www.ccrpc.org/transportation/lrtp.php The public has been invited to comment dozens of times over the last 10 years. It is hard to engage the public in these plans because the immediate impact is not obvious to most people. The plans do matter and the passionate debate on this project is evidence of how much plans do matter. So, when you see a notification for a public input meeting on a plan, PAY ATTENTION! Give your input and stay engaged.
Robert Knilands
I understand the Apollo businesses wanting the road to be extended.
At north Lincoln, though, there is access to I-74. If Lincoln were improved, the access would be even better.
My point, which I expect I’ll be making often, is we are making decisions based on the potential benefits for developers. At the same time, reuse of existing, developed areas rarely is considered. The approach seems to be we can always tear up more land, expand on the fringes, etc.
In addition, when a necessary project like I-74 expansion in a developed area is proposed, then people are able to scream and yell and get that project taken off the list. There’s easily enough traffic throughout the day to justify that extra lane, and there might have been money to improve the awful interchanges between I-74 and I-57.
We are ignoring common sense projects and running forward with grandiose schemes just so wealthy developers will stay happy. That pattern cannot continue.
This is a good summary of where things stand, and the headline sums it up. I have four basic questions. One is exactly how the planner/developer/city-bureaucrat group has come up with the thousands of jobs scenarios, and should these “studies” be audited by people outside the planner/developer/neoliberal circle? Two is what promises have been made to what developers and corporations by whom? (Mark Dixon has recently been quoted as indicating that Atkins has been promised something, and Laurel Prussing has perhaps indicated that Supervalu has certain expectations). Three is exactly who and or what industries do the supporters expect to build along Olympian. (Concomitant with that, who exactly have the “public”-private Economic Development Corporation and or Chamber of Commerce been talking to?) Four is why there is all this state money for projects like this while human services are being eviscerated?
Janet S
All of the Urbana projections for the development of this area is based on willing sellers. Several of the major landowners are not ever going to sell the land and thus no development will occur. We need to value Agriculture as an economic venture and not just blacktop and more big box stores. The reason that the project was stalled 13 years ago is in the hands of Urbana. For them to now turn around and lead the project doesn’t sit right with a lot of folks. To compare Olympian with Windsor is not a fair comparison. Windsor has feeder roads that allow access to and from it at Race, Lincoln, First, etc. Olympian as drawn will only have Lincoln and it has two huge curves that will prohibit truck traffic and it is a township road that does not allow though trucks. To say it has to be completed because it has been planned for 13 years, is that a reason to spend 30 million tax payer dollars.. and it doesn’t matter which pot that comes from, it is still our tax money at work. These are facts, not spin..
http://olympiandriveproject.com/site10/
Check out the new Olympian Drive website.
Janet Scharlau
I did look at the website. It shows Ford Harris Road, an viable alternate route and the beauty of the country that they want to pave over. Beautiful Fields of corn and beans that feed us all. I think it humerous that they are making a great point for those that oppose. How could you cover this beauty with concrete .
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