City failed to follow its own comprehensive plan

Regarding your July 9 editorial regarding the Chauncey development project (“Opponents have had their say”): I agree with your first statement, “Not agreeing with the City Council's decision is not reason enough for them to bring a lawsuit to try to derail the project, which has generated considerable excitement in addition to staunch opposition.” However, mere disagreement is not the basis for this civil justice action.

It is about whether the City of Iowa City has to follow the same rules it enforces upon everyone else. The City failed to follow its own comprehensive plan in sanctioning this development. Our comprehensive plan provides: “As the community grows and the downtown prospers, care should be taken in providing proper transitions between the intensity of downtown development and surrounding residential neighborhoods.”

Placing this 20-story behemoth between the downtown and a historic neighborhood hardly seems to be a “proper transition” that our plan requires. Your editorial will have no impact on our efforts to ensure that our city upholds the promises that it made when it passed the comprehensive plan. Our commitment is to the residents of Iowa City who believe in our comprehensive plan.

We have a team of public interest lawyers ready to spend years if necessary to ensure that the city upholds its promises that it made to its citizens when it passed the comprehensive plan.

Rockne Cole

Co-Chair,

Iowa Coalition Against The Shadow