Newton Booth to Honor SACOG'S McKeever

2011-11-10T10:03:59Z

The Newton Booth Neighborhoods Association (NBNA) is honoring Mike McKeever, Executive Director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), with the organization’s 2011 Growing Together Award for his role earlier this year as the volunteer mediator in a neighborhood development controversy.

The NBNA represents the Poverty Ridge, Newton Booth, and Alhambra Triangle neighborhoods in Sacramento’s District 4.

The award will be presented to McKeever Thursday, November 10th, at Newton’s Night Out, a neighborhood event to be held at Revolution Wines, 2831 S Street, from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm. McKeever will be in attendance.

The Growing Together Award, established in August 2011, is given to "a company or individual who works to implement and/or promote urban growth through cooperative interaction with neighborhood communities," according to the neighborhood association’s Facebook page for the event.

The award’s presentation writes a positive afterword to an emotional development saga that played out over several public hearings as well as the op-ed page of the Sacramento Bee, but concluded with a negotiated agreement that few expected--an agreement achieved largely due to McKeever’s involvement.

From September 2010 to July 2011, the Newton Booth neighborhood, located on the southern edge of midtown between R and W Streets from 23rd to Alhambra, was embroiled in a contentious battle with local developer and “smart growth” advocate Andrea Rosen over a two-building, six-unit, gated courtyard development she was proposing for a corner lot at 24th and T Streets.

Already angered by the City’s lack of outreach before permitting Rosen to demolish the small 1940‘s era moderne-style home that previously stood on the site, neighborhood residents vehemently fought the project, arguing that it was too massive and too contemporary for an area distinguished by Craftsman era bungalow houses, but scarred by unattractive 1970‘s era apartment buildings.

Equally forceful in her pursuit of the project’s realization was Rosen, who saw her development as precisely the kind of quality “smart growth” Central Central infill envisioned by the Sacramento 2030 General Plan, which was adopted by the City Council in 2009 as a guidebook for future urban growth, including eco-friendly “smart growth” principles of increased density near mass transit.

The controversy pitted residents of a neighborhood struggling to retain its identity against the region’s “smart growth” advocates, who for years had worked to advance their principles and finally saw light at the end of the tunnel with the 2009 adoption of the General Plan,. Both sides saw themselves in the role of David facing a Goliath.

When the Planning Commission mandated at a Spring 2011 hearing that the two sides negotiate, the 24th and T Street project appeared destined for a final acrimonious fight before the City Council, potentially putting at risk the success of a development considered by its advocates to be the first to overtly embrace the principles of the General Plan.

That’s when McKeever, himself a supporter of the project and whose organization, SACOG, was one of the primary drivers behind the General Plan, offered to mediate the negotiation. Already known to Rosen, McKeever met with and won the trust of neighborhood representatives. A few months later, an agreement was reached that incorporated design changes and one fewer units, but allowed the project to move forward with unanimous approval by the Planning Commission in July 2011. It was an agreement the developer herself called “unprecedented.”

As for Newton Booth, McKeever is receiving the neighborhood association’s Growing Together Award “in recognition of his commitment to the advancement and implementation of the General Plan through a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect,” according to the NBNA’s event description.

“The service Mike McKeever performed for our neighborhood makes him truly deserving,” says NBNA board member Heather Scott, who held a key role in the neighborhood group that negotiated the agreement. “I am proud of the compromise that Mr. McKeever helped to negotiate; we could not have reached it without him.”

Scott will present the award to McKeever on behalf of the NBNA.

The official NBNA Facebook page can be reached at www.facebook.com/newtonbooth.

Disclosure: William Robertson is current president of the NBNA, and a neighborhood representative directly involved in the cited controversy.

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Newton Booth to Honor SACOG'S McKeever