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Received via email from <br />Pedro Gomez, PBA <br />On 2/1/2019 at 9:54 AM <br />French Park Association <br />Written Comments about the LEGACY SQUARE 93 -Unit Apartment Project <br />609 Spurgeon Street <br />January 28, 2019 <br />The French Park Association quickly reviewed the Initial Study and Mitigated Negative <br />Declaration (MND) for the Legacy Square project and offer the following comments: <br />1. Lack of Proper and Timely Notification to the French Park Association and French <br />Park Residents <br />As was stated at the recent Planning Commission hearing for the Density Bonus Agreement <br />hearing for the project, held January 14, 2019, the single notification the French Park Board <br />received regarding the Legacy Square apartment project relates only to the Planning <br />Commission meeting. It appears no other notices, telephone calls, or other communication <br />was received by our Board until early January 2019, just prior to the public hearing on the <br />density agreement. <br />During the January 14, 2019 Planning Commission meeting the lead Applicant, <br />NationalCORE, said that other notifications were mailed to residents, however in conversation <br />with over a dozen owners and tenants no one remembered receiving notices for any project <br />meetings, workshops or walks. <br />Despite adjoining the project, French Park residents were not invited to participate in the <br />outreach process. If French Park residents had attended project outreach meetings, our <br />involvement may have had a direct result of the project's configuration, density, its impact on <br />the existing antique Methodist building, and impacts to other adjoining neighborhoods. In a <br />subsequent meeting between French Park and NationalCORE, it was unable to produce a <br />record of where outreached attendees live because no record of this was kept according to <br />Alexa Washburn, Vice President of Planning for NationalCORE. Based on the lack of <br />notification and other outreach efforts to the French Park Board, and the French Park <br />community, we conclude the public outreach for the project failed to adequately notify, involve <br />and receive comments from our neighborhood. Similarly co -applicants Mercy House and the <br />Methodist Church, also failed to communicate to French Park about the project. <br />It is disturbing to French Park how the three project proponents, National CORE, Mercy <br />House and the Methodist Church, missed an important opportunity to coordinate its project <br />with the oldest neighborhood in the City, and the first neighborhood to have a representative <br />association, to be designated as historic, and enjoy special district status where a majority of <br />its antique buildings are on city's register of historic properties. Our neighbor and partner, <br />Mercy House, also seems to have forgotten about its host neighborhood, and the several past <br />projects, including its AIDS hospice, French Park worked with Mercy House on to bring to our <br />community. <br />Based on the lack of notification to French Park Association, and our neighborhood's many <br />residents, we again request more time to review the Initial Study, the MMD, and its 1,300 <br />X <br />