Columbia Pike Land Use & Housing Study

With this success, new challenges arrise for our community. The ongoing Columbia Pike Land Use and Housing Study aims to address  these challenges and provide guidance and policy recommendations on how our community will achieve its long term goals:

1. Foster a healthy, diverse community with high quality of life along the Pike.
2. Stabilize and strengthen single-family and multi-family neighborhoods and support established concepts of vibrant, economically-strong mixed-use commercial centers.
3. Improve existing housing stock and expand housing options to achieve a housing mix that serves diverse households, preserves affordability for current and future residents, and supports the adopted Housing Goals and Targets and the Columbia Pike Initiative.
4. Create a safe, pedestrian-friendly and multi-modal corridor with attractive and tree- lined streetscapes and seamless linkages between neighborhoods, to the commercial centers, and the region.
5. Preserve neighborhood character, historic buildings and tree canopy.
6. Enhance urban design and architectural features to improve the Pike’s identity and maintain compatible transitions between the neighborhoods and commercial centers.
7. Incorporate sustainable, energy efficient, “green” neighborhood and building design principles.

While the Form-Based-Code-process focused on the Pike’s four commercial centers, the current Housing Study will extend the Pike Community’s vision  to the multi-family residential areas between the Pike’s commercial centers, with a goal of preserving affordable housing.  This is a long- term plan that would be implemented over the next 30 years.

A Working Group of County staff and appointed community members (CPRO is part of this working group) has been meeting on the Land Use & Housing Study.  As of the beginning of 2011, work includes the assistance of professional planners, urban designers and economic analysts on the analysis phase of the plan.  A series of public meetings are being planned, starting in January, to undertake this analysis phase.

The Working Group led a discussion with the broader Plenary Group in the fall on proposed housing goals.  These goals, and others the Plenary Group reviewed earlier this year, will frame this next phase of work, which will identify feasible, preferred options for how the residential areas will look in the future.

The group’s proposed goal is to maintain a mixed income community along the Pike over time by preserving a significant portion of the housing stock as affordable to a diverse population.  You can view the Plenary Group’s feedback on the housing goals on the project web site.  Click on this link and then follow the link to the 9/27/10 meeting date.  After reviewing the Plenary Group’s feedback, the Working Group agreed upon several modifications to the housing objectives which will be posted online soon.