Community Area Planning is a key resource for our REBIC members. Community Area Plans are published for the city’s 14 sub-geographies and provide important community-level guidance for the built environment including land use, design, transportation, and open space.
These plans complement the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan and are an important part of the city’s planning framework designed to ensure all planning efforts are aligned with and aimed at implementing Charlotte’s vision for the future.
My take: We can all be tempted to overcommit, but as REBIC members dedicated to a measurable outcome, we need to prioritize and explore this resource NOW. How can we ask elected officials and other key decisionmakers to respond if we’re too busy to immerse ourselves in the issues? The Community Area Planning process is incredibly important. Decisions on how our community will grow over the next 10 to 20 to 30 years are made during the course of this work. We want to be forward thinking and that means we need the participation of design professionals, practitioners, developers, builders, lenders, and pretty much anyone else with knowledge of growth fundamentals.
2. Member Spotlight – Featuring Tracy Butler, Executive Officer of the HBA of Greater Charlotte
We are pleased to feature Tracy Butler, Executive Officer of the Home Builders Association of Greater Charlotte, as our latest member spotlight. She comes to us after a long history of successful leadership appointments in the Central and Southern Illinois region and was chosen from a national pool of candidates. Her most recent position, from 2009 until joining the HBAGC in January, was the Executive Officer of the Home Builders & Remodelers Metro East Association in Maryville, IL. Prior to that she served in many Builder Association leadership positions, including the Director of Member Benefits and Finance for the Illinois Home Builder’s Association. In 2016 she was awarded NAHB PWB EO of the Year. Read more about her here: Tracy Butler Bio.
Bonus: Charlotte UDO Change Request Form Information Available on the REBIC Website!
My take: REBIC volunteers developed the form in an effort to better organize information and present it to Council and Planning Staff whereby changes, updates, and improvements could be made in an expeditious manner. While we would all like everything to be the way we want it to be as of yesterday, that’s just not the reality. This tool has been effective in assisting all interested parties in focusing their efforts where they need to be and then moving on to the next item. We’ll see where it goes, but I think we’re off to a decent start.
Rob Nanfelt
Executive Director, REBIC