|
12
<br /> Page 4 of 5 Benjamin (BJ)
<br /> visited 49 out of 50 states, and most major cities)as well as Canada, Europe, and Japan. These
<br /> travels exposed me to a wide variety of scenes and people, constantly pushing me out of my
<br /> comfort zones and past my cultural biases.
<br /> While living in Brooklyn from the late 90s through the late aughts, I bore witness to massive
<br /> development changes. I lived in a quasi-legal, converted warehouse along the East River. At that
<br /> time, it sat nestled between a recycling plant, a concrete plant, and a carpet factory. Now it is
<br /> surrounded by luxury condominiums and skyscrapers. That wave of development, while bringing
<br /> a ton of profit and prosperity to blighted and abandoned industrial neighborhoods, also had a
<br /> well-documented gentrifying effect. Seeing this process unfold firsthand (indeed being part of it
<br /> as a rider upon an early wave of artists moving to the neighborhood in search of affordable living
<br /> space)taught me an incredible amount about the complexities of urban development. Nothing in
<br /> this world comes without trade offs.
<br /> Before moving to North Carolina, my wife and I worked with a few others on a project to convert
<br /> the Strathmore Mill, an abandoned paper mill in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, into artist studio
<br /> spaces. While the project was ultimately unsuccessful, it was a crash course in complications
<br /> around redevelopment, zoning, town ordinances, environmental regulation, and financial
<br /> challenges. I have applied this knowledge consistently ever since, from our search for a property
<br /> to call home, through our many continued improvements restoring our circa 1957 house, as well
<br /> as in sculpting our property back towards agrarian pursuits.
<br /> Professionally, I work as a software engineering manager for Adobe. I've been doing web and
<br /> tech work to pay the bills since the first dot com boom in the late 90s. This kind of work requires
<br /> an incredible amount of focus, planning, collaboration, and foresight. I have learned to assume
<br /> nothing, and to plan for worst case scenarios. My technical skills (reasoning, data analysis,
<br /> software architecture, and distributed systems)are applicable to all manner of situations
<br /> requiring a "systems thinking"[approach, such as town planning. I am no stranger to intricacy,
<br /> process, and asynchronicity, having previously worked on projects spanning the globe from LA
<br /> to Bombay, with multiple parties in multiple time zones in between.
<br /> Overall, as with the Planning Commission, I believe I can bring a nuanced and passionate voice
<br /> to the Chapel Hill Board of Adjustment. I pride myself in being able to analyze complex problems
<br /> and apply outside-the-box thinking. Regulations are made for legitimate and pragmatic reasons.
<br /> But, in my experience, the saying holds true: Rules are made to be broken. I believe sound
<br /> government attempts to apply fairness, equity, and foresight in its building codes and planning
<br /> charters, but that there will always be exceptions that provide tangible and widespread benefit.
<br /> If appointed to the Board of Adjustment, I will use my extensive problem solving skills,
<br /> community activism experience, and collaborative capabilities to equitably settle matters of
<br /> dispute and variance with the Land Use Management Ordinance.
<br /> Please explain your reasons for wanting to serve on this board
<br /> As I stated in my application for the Planning Commission, since moving to Chapel Hill, I have
<br /> been paying close attention to the changes around Town. I know that Chapel Hill has a
<br /> reputation of being overly deliberative when it comes to development, as well as amendment of
<br /> our Land Use Management Ordinance.
<br /> I have learned that certain policies have led to undesirable outcomes, such as the application of
<br /> form-based code that has led to massively dense development in the Blue Hill District. But I have
<br /> also seen developments, like Aura, take prolonged periods of review and adjudication before
<br /> being granted approval. From what I can tell, the Town has ambitious goals around increasing
<br /> housing in ways that are not yet formalized in the LUMO. This means the Board of Adjustments
<br /> serves an important role in ensuring that beneficial but explicitly forbidden projects can come to
<br /> fruition, and in reasonable time frames.
<br /> In any zoning or regulatory ordinance, there must be room for outlier cases and special use
<br />
|