02-16-12 Regular, Public Hearing and Workshop Meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission

Browse Search

Economic Partnership, Economic Alliance Houston Port Region, Greater Houston Partnership, and the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) to work towards enhancing economic development within the City. Consider convening an annual meeting with partners to ensure a synergistic, efficient, and coordinated plan of action is realized. 14)Continue with Initiate a strong business retention and expansion program. While recruiting new businesses is important to growing its economic base, La Porte cannot afford to ignore its current businesses and risk losing one of them to closure or relocation. A strong business retention and expansion program should include regular visits with local employers. These visits can include formal surveys or be informal interviews. However, they should establish a relationship with the employer and serve as a mechanism by which the EDC Economic Development Coordinatorcan ascertain any major challenges or plans for expansion, and help to identify suppliers or customers who could benefit from relocating to La Porte. 15)Budget to update the La Porte Economic Development Strategic Plan, which was prepared as a five-year plan of action (2009-2013). Focus Area 2 – Improved business friendliness of the City. One topic that was frequently discussed during the public participation “What we hear is that it process was the perceived lack of business friendliness of the City with takes a long time to regard to how projects moved through the development process. Indeed, it review plans. Developers was a topic that came up in almost every small group charrette, many make seven corrections, stakeholder interviews, and in public meetings. It was typically framed from and when it is re- the standpoint that it takes longer to permit a project than it actually takes to construct a project, or that it was overly difficult to permit rehabilitation reviewed, there are 10 or other improvement projects. Other times, it was framed as adding more new things.” requirements during each subsequent submittal, rather than being identified Source: Interview with Louis Rigby, during the original submittal. Some of this discontent may be attributed to former Mayor of La Porte. the normal course of doing government business. But, a large part of it may be attributed to the City’s outdated zoning and development codes and administrative and public approval processes. What is important, Moving Forward though, is for the City to dedicate time and resources to pinpoint the issues, and then determine an action plan to correct them. The City should consider consolidating and streamlining its As the City moves forward with the recommended zoning and development codes and development code changes contemplated throughout this associated processes by Comprehensive Plan Update, it is highly recommended to reach out to, combining them into a single and and involve, the development community in the process. Consolidating comprehensive Unified all the zoning and development codes into a single and comprehensive Development Code (UDC). See Unified Development Code (UDC) is an opportunity to implement the Chapter 6, Implementation, for regulatory provisions discussed in this plan, while at the same time, providing an opportunity to greatly improve the administrative and further information. public approval processes – all of which can improve La Porte’s business Source: Kendig Keast Collaborative. 5.11 Economic 2. 11Adopted July 20, 2009 Dlt