The newly formed steering committee for Bristol Place Phase II met on August 31, 2015 at the Oakwood Trace Townhomes Community Room. This will be new office/community meeting space for Bristol Place since the loss of 119 E. Roper due to storm damage. The steering committee is a subcommittee of the Neighborhood Services Advisory Board and is led by Wesley Clayborn and Karen Foster. The subcommittee consists of Ed Bland (Housing Authority of Champaign County, who is a partner with the City on this redevelopment), a renter and owner from Bristol Place, owners from Garwood and Beardsley Park, Andrew Weiss and Jameel Jones (Champaign Park District), and Patricia Avery (NAACP). City departments represented on the team include NSD, Planning and Development, Finance, and Public Works.
The steering committee will help craft the developer selection criteria for the Bristol Place redevelopment. The first meeting focused on introducing the team, updating the group on Phase I activities (acquisition, relocation and demolition), reviewing the developer selection process, outlining methods for public engagement on the developer selection and choosing the next meeting date. The team also received updates from Assistant City Engineer Eleanor Blackmon regarding preliminary Boneyard drainage design plan and an overview from Assistant Director of Planning and Development Rob Kowalski of the Bristol Place LEED-ND master plan. The group ended with a brief overview from Neighborhood Services Director Kevin Jackson of existing LEED-ND developments that are similar in scope. The group expressed interest in possibly touring, if feasible, some of those sites in addition to touring the short list of developers that will be considered.
The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, September 21, 2015, from 4:30-6:00 pm and an open house will be held on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 in the early evening.