Downtown Dining Dilemmas in Ludington and Alexandria

[XLFD]

At 3:00 PM on Friday, April 12, 2013, the City is holding a special meeting where they are expected to adopt ordinance 258-13 and 259-13 as their sole stated purpose, according to Mayor John Henderson's announcement at Monday's regularly scheduled meeting.  These ordinances have to do with outdoor dining and merchandise display in the central/maritime business district and its zoning. 

At the March 18 meeting, these two ordinances were to be voted on, but were tabled mainly due to the dramatic raising of the acceptable noise levels in those areas to 90 decibels at a 20 ft. distance.  This would be equivalent to the noise you hear when you use a loud lawnmower, and I seem to see most of the dedicated landscapers in the area using hearing protection.  It went back to a committee meeting where it got looked at again and hopefully adapted to realistic noise levels, but that meeting happened after Monday's meeting.

 

My primary concern is the lack of maneuverability space left over downtown.  Efforts have been made to make the beach handicap accessible, but when you restrict the downtown sidewalk to less than 5 feet clearance, with the possibility of having to weave in and out of bump-outs, you guarantee that accessibility will be lacking downtown to the disabled, cyclists, and pedestrians.  A cluttered downtown with loud, competing music and labyrinthine pathways is not a good recipe for success of this experiment, in my honest opinion.

 

I have heard other concerns, unvoiced at the council, that many merchants are worried about the loss of parking spaces due to bump-outs, and some of the safety issues of having customers out in the street.  In the COLDNews 7-24-2012, and unamended publicly since: "(Pending approval from MDOT, Mayor Henderson said) plastic composite would be used to build the bump-outs, which would be flush with the current sidewalk and curbs and take up five feet of the 8-foot width of parallel parking spaces currently along the street downtown. It would be a tradeoff, he said, for the business owner to give up a parking space or two to get enough room for tables and chairs in front of their restaurants.

Henderson said participating merchants would be able to use about five feet of space nearest their business for eating space and the bump-outs would provide room for pedestrians to move past the stores." 

What they have already passed on March 4th is the Downtown Dining Guidelines, complete with the usual amount of congratulation to its co-authors:

 

 

Our local newspaper agreed:  COLDNews 3-5-2013:  "The outdoor dining areas would also be subject to the city’s design guidelines and the Downtown Ludington Board worked out a list of those guidelines."  Heather and Carol did the usual incredible work on these guidelines, but perhaps the reason they did such incredible work is that it was basically plagiarized from Alexandria Virginia's Outdoor Dining Design Guidelines:  http://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/planning/info/outdoor_dining_...

 

Here is the first page of Ludington's 19 page guidelines:

Compared with this page from Alexandria's guidelines:

Ludington's colors are a little more pastel than Alexandria's, probably due to the photocopying process, but this and all other pages in the Ludington Guideline Manual are almost identical except for some cropping, changes to the City's name, and some other purely stylistic changes. 

 

Marvel at the ingenuity of our Girls Heather and Carol as they adapted all the elements of the Alexandria, Virginia guidelines into their own, and gracefully took credit for this clever policy.  Here is the various other pages of Ludington's guidelines, have the kids amuse themselves by looking  at them and matching the pages from Ludington's rules to Alexandria's original policy, recopied here:

 http://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/planning/info/outdoor_dining_... 

and these from Ludington: 

2.png  3.png  4.png  5.png  6.png  7.png  8.png  9.png  10.png  11.png  12.png  13.png  14.png  15.png  16.png  17.png  18.png  and finishing with page 19:

 

 

and it's slightly modified language and page design in Alexandria's page 24:

 

 

Once again, great job, Ladies of Ludington City Hall; the originality and inventiveness of your Downtown Ludington Outdoor Dining Design Guidelines are an inspiration to everyone who cuts, copies, and pastes other people's work and claim the credit for it. 

 

   Downtown Alexandria:  Note the diners in the street, and think of that on Ludington or James Streets.  Do their rules fit us?

[AQUAMAN]

When's the last time we saw any real and true original ideas from Ludington's officials? NEVER! The only reason we have petunias down the avenue is because we copied it from Charlevoix. Plagiarism is not exactly a form of compliment when you draft new ordinances for your particular city, esp. in this blunt form. Eating outside in a well aired and protected open area like a park is one thing. Eating in the street with fumes, fast cars, bikes, roller blades, noise levels of music, bugs, bird droppings/fly- bys, I just don't see where it plays well in our downtown in the summer months at all. Bad idea waiting for an accident if you ask me, time will tell. I'm surprised our chief safety officer Barnett is on the same page with this boondoggle.

[XLFD]

Very funny, EyE-- and like the ocular organ you're named for is known for being-- very perceptive. 

I still see some dog bowls out downtown, but I can imagine the dog-friendly atmosphere downtown this summer, with the sidewalk's width being reduced to 5 feet or less, look for Fido to be looking over that fence.  I don't think the seagulls will pay attention because of all the people who feed them down at the beach-- wait , that's illegal now. 

[AQUAMAN]

Good points EyE, you're funny today. What about those dog bowls?  Seagull droppings are also not appetizing, and if anyone drops an alka-seltzer on the sidewalk, look out...lol.

[Willy]

X. Good catch on the Alexandria plagiarism.

[XLFD]

Thanks, and I hope that the City Councilors, Mayor, and the women who loved the Alexandrian experiment, someday acknowledge the fact, instead of heaping praise on themselves.  FYI, the Alexandria guidelines were passed into practice in January 2006.