Planning for the Barnes Creek Neighborhood Underway - Plan Alternatives Expected Between Late Fall and Early Spring for Public Review and Input...
PURPOSE OF A NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN
Neighborhood plans are a (more refined) component of comprehensive land use plans. They are essential to the orderly growth of the community, because they establish a framework within which future development can occur (a fairly recent example of how a neighborhood plan guides growth can be observed in the Prairie Ridge Neighborhood).
Neighborhood plans help municipalities plan for the future provision of services, such as: water, sewer, police, fire, and road improvements. They take into consideration: available resources, architecture, urban design, information and input from community members, and more. Because municipalities must remain able to provide services as a community grows, they must be able to know with some amount of certainty what type of growth will occur in which areas.
Despite having the ability to use planning to establish a framework for orderly growth, municipalities are not the driving force behind growth in a community. Private land owners are. Private land owners are responsible for deciding when to develop their property. They then approach a municipality with the proposed plan for their property. The municipality reviews the property owner’s plan to ensure that it falls within the framework established by both comprehensive and neighborhood plans for the area.
This review helps the community determine if the use proposed by a private land owner is compatible with the existing development and planned future uses in the neighborhood. Public input from those in the neighborhood is an important part of this process.
The review also helps the municipality determine if it can realistically provide adequate municipal services for the new development without shifting any of the cost to existing tax payers in the community. The Village has long followed the practice of having new development pay its own way so that existing taxpayers would not have to shoulder the financial tax burden for new development.
BARNES CREEK NEIGHBORHOOD
The Barnes Creek Neighborhood is bounded by 89th and 91st Streets on the north, Sheridan Road on the east, Highway 165 on the south (104th Street), and the Kenosha County Bike Trail on the west. The neighborhood comprises a number of older subdivisions, including Springbrook, Brookside Gardens and Hickory Grove. The remainder of the area is primarily farmland but also includes home sites, the Keno Theater, and some significant archeological sites. Past plans proposed in the neighborhood by a private land owner included a limestone quarry. That project did not proceed due to inconsistency with the comprehensive plan in place at the time (1994).
With sanitary sewer and water already extended around the perimeter of the neighborhood, Pleasant Prairie’s comprehensive plan (adopted in 2009) shows the future proposed uses in the Barnes Creek Neighborhood as mainly residential with smaller areas designated for: a community retail and service center, a public school/park, and environmental corridors/green space. The upcoming Barnes Creek Neighborhood Plan will further refine future proposed uses in the area. Public input will be an important part of this planning process.