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The Winona City Council may limit blufftop building in the future. There’s a comforting thought.
There is little blufftop left in the city that hasn’t been developed. We’ll have an ordinance in place, but it won’t have a use.
A proposed five-lot subdivision near Garvin Heights had its preliminary plat approved at this week’s council meeting. The cluster plat for Solivia Estates will make way for five building lots overlooking the city. The building sites may be some of the last remaining bluff lots overlooking the city.
Of course, the appeal — and value — of the lots will be dependent on the view. The developer, Dan Nisbit, is gambling the lots will be desirable, but at the same time he is assuring the council the homes won’t be seen from the valley.
That’ll be a neat trick — homes looking over the valley but not visible from the valley.
The city is backpedaling to put a bluffland ordinance in place that will protect the city’s blufftops from development. It’s a little late. Almost every bit of private land in the city that overlooks the city has homes on it now.
Nisbit knows the restriction is coming and he wants approval before his land can’t be made as profitable as he hoped.
When all is said and done, it’s about money.
A building lot in this development will be easy to sell if the view is spectacular. Most views from the bluffs are. The lots certainly will have little to offer as a building site. Each lot will provide a challenge to the homeowner and the builder. It won’t be hard to keep the bulk of the lot in its natural state — another aspect of building on a steep lot. Homeowners won’t have much use for a lawnmower. The steep lots will keep the owners from planning much of a yard.
The value of this cluster development is in the view it will offer. At the very least, prospective homeowners will be able to see the river valley. For that, the developer will be able to make a tidy profit.
The city planners tried to predict if the homes would be seen from the city. Using a bucket truck, the planners did their best to predict if the house tops would be visible from the city. The planners didn’t think so.
That shouldn’t be good enough. Houses will protrude from this bluff.
When houses are built, trees will be cut down. If the houses aren’t visible then, the house will certainly be visible when the trees lose their leaves in the fall and winter.
This building site is all about making a profit. The city council has become weak-kneed about stopping this development. If the city approves the final plat, Nisbit will be able to profit from his investment and we’ll all have to pay for the city’s mistake.
Free speech reaches the toilet
Sen. Larry Craig’s bathroom stall foot-tapping has forever changed how men will use a public restroom. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that Craig’s bathroom etiquette should be protected under his freedom of speech.
The First Amendment is a troublesome freedom. Our right to free speech has caused us to allow flag burning, pornography and now the ACLU argues that propositioning a person in the bathroom stall next to you is your right as long as you don’t have sex right there in the bathroom.
I’m sure the crafters of our Bill of Rights did not envision the likes of Craig or Larry Flynt when they wrote the freedom of speech law. As smart and as forward-thinking as our founding fathers were, they couldn’t possibly predict our society was going to get so weird.
The ACLU has never missed an opportunity to find extreme cases to protect our rights. Next we’ll be defending the poetry on the public bathroom stalls.
Jim Galewski is the retired editor and Opinion page editor of the Winona Daily News. His views don’t necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper. If you have an idea or tip about a Winona issue, call Jim at (507) 452-3960. His e-mail is editor@luminet.
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to The city better get prepared to pay out the nose for this one wrote on Sep 27, 2007 8:57 PM: