Hundreds of people have signed up for our email alerts over the last four years to keep up with the latest development proposals near Creve Coeur Park.  We're switching to a new email service, so to keep the information coming, please sign up  for email alerts AGAIN with the link at right.

We expect developers of Maryland Pointe to return with a conceptual plan for their big-box development in the next few months.  Stay on top of the news by re-subscribing! 

There will be competition for City Council seats in Wards 1 and 2 in Maryland Heights.  Who sits on City Council has a lot to say about the direction of our city, so know your ward and know your candidates!  

See the candidates on Patch.com.
Find out which ward you're in.

Mark your calendar to vote on April 2!

Come join us for a night of fun at our annual Trivia Night fundraiser. Grab your friends and neighbors and test your knowledge while supporting our efforts to save the floodplain by Creve Coeur Park from massive commercial development.

MHRRG has been partnering with the Open Space Council to help educate the community on the plans that Maryland Heights, St. Louis County and certain landowners have come up with to pave over farmland and wetlands adjacent to Creve Coeur Park. We will have more information available during the trivia night and have people on hand to answer questions before the event begins.

This event is MHRRG's main fundraiser for the year, please help us make it successful! There will be a Raffle and Silent Auction conducted throughout the evening as well as extra games thrown in for fun. Put together a table of 8 people and come have some fun!
For more information and registration form, go here.

We need your ideas and help to make our 5th Annual Trivia Night a great success on Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012!  

We spent down a large portion of our reserves this fall with mailed notices and educational outreach on the Maryland Pointe development skirmish with Planning & Zoning.  

Now we need to refill the coffers so we can continue to fight when Maryland Pointe developers bring their initial design plan to the city.


Our first planning meeting for Trivia Night will be featured at Second Saturday this weekend. We're looking for volunteers to organize, publicize, solicit prizes from local businesses, and help us run the event. We also need supporters to recruit players for the fun evening we have in store. 

It doesn't matter if you have experience or not, we're all in it together. Sharing our knowledge and having fun! 

Save It, Don't Pave It! Here's how you can help:

Second Saturday Meeting
Saturday, Dec. 10, 2012
St. Louis Bread Co. at Westport 
Drop in between 9:30-11:00 a.m. 

Read the editorial: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/article_6065a503-af24-5764-9fcb-b9d9a122a362.html?mode=story

When the Planning Commission let the Maryland Pointe developers go forward to the next stage, they set out a list of conditions the new plan must meet from the get-go.  This organization hosted a community meeting during which residents made their own comments and additions to the city's conditions.

Both documents were reviewed at the Oct. 25 meeting, but not everyone got a copy.  Click here to review a copy of the conditions and residents' comments.  Take a close look and let us know what you think.

Proving they care about their city and Creve Coeur Park, area residents packed the  Planning Commission meeting tonight to standing room only.  The commission voted to "approve with conditions" the Maryland Pointe plan to put big-box retail and office space in the Missouri River floodplain, next to Creve Coeur Park.  That's the bad news, but there is some good news, too.

First, the vote was not unanimous.  Commissioner Mark Madden voted against the resolution and received a standing ovation for it. 

Second, we applaud the conditions put forth by the city.  They set the bar for the developer very high in such categories as transportation, site design and stormwater management. 'If you're going to build there, you're going to make it state of the art' is the message.

The sustained voices of residents have made a big difference already in the quality of the ideas that will be proposed in the next step, the preliminary development plan.  There is no time estimate of when the developer will return with the plan.  But in the meantime, there is more work to be done to make sure we don't face similar disastrous proposals in the future.

Showing up and working together, we can continue to make Maryland Heights a better place to live. 

There is some confusion about what happened at the last Planning Commission meeting.  The commission was expected to vote up or down on Maryland Pointe, but they found a middle road.  They asked the city's planning staff to develop a third option by coming up with a list of conditions the developers would have to meet if the commission voted to "approve the proposal with conditions."

At the Oct. 25 meeting, the Planning Commission WILL vote one of three ways:
1. Denial 
2. Approval
3. Approval with conditions

Public pressure IS having an impact on the process!  Show up on Oct. 25 and urge the commission to deny the Maryland Pointe proposal.  It is easy to ignore people you can't see.  We need to make sure they see a packed house of concerned citizens.
 

The planning commission was visibly uncomfortable last night as they were clearly being pressured to vote in favor of the Maryland Pointe project. City Planner Wayne Oldroyd stood at the podium basically telling them they could not deny the plan and should “approve it with conditions.” When members of the commission (kudos to Commissioner Mark Madden) repeatedly asked to get more information about economic viability before they voted, Oldroyd repeatedly told them they couldn’t have that at this point-- even though he told them otherwise two weeks ago. 

After more than 30 minutes of mind-numbing “discussion” by the planning staff, the commission caved in a 7 – 0 vote to approve the plan with conditions. We’ve seen this situation time and time again; a planning commission or city council member is unsure of how to vote or they aren’t happy with the way a plan is laid out, yet they vote “yes” anyway. This is just plain wrong. 

Sadly, this produces a process in which:

1. Everyone involved in the project hopes that if they drag it on long enough, the public will lose interest and go away.
2. If you can’t or won’t kill something at the first step in the process, it basically snowballs into a done deal.

 
The planning commission was told last night that the developer and the city had already put so much time and money into this project that it should be passed through to the next stage. But just because a decision was made 15 years ago by private landowners to rebuild the levee, speculating that the value of their land would increase, it doesn’t mean the rest of us need to blindly accept every plan for development that comes along. Yes, the landowners have every right to sell their land to whomever they like, but that doesn’t give the buyer the right to do anything they want with that land.

The comprehensive plan the city is following is outdated -- by the city planner’s own admission at the Sept. 27 meeting -- and includes very little input from anyone except a handful of developers, builders and landowners. Most of the large landowners don’t even live in Maryland Heights anymore, yet they still give large amounts of money in campaign donations to the Mayor and at least half of the City Council. Clearly we need to protect ourselves.

The residents of Maryland Heights and everyone who loves Creve Coeur Park and the area surrounding it need to stand together; now is the time to show up and be counted. Call, write or email your City Council representative and the Mayor. Get your neighbors to sign the petition against the development being planned. Most of all SHOW UP for the public meetings. The 50-60 people who showed up to the last two meetings are not enough. The weight of your presence and the power of your stare are necessary to show the Planning Commission and the City Council that we are not going away.  It’s easy to ignore people you can’t see.