More Poor Planning

Photo by Jana Birchum

Construction was still halted this week on the Waller Creek Tunnel intake facility in Waterloo Park, after the city admitted last week that the building design is too tall for the Capitol view corridor it sits in. Council voted Thursday to approve up to $1.8 million for outside legal counsel to work on the problem. KXAN quoted Mayor Lee Leffingwell as saying, "The engineers and designers are responsible for the error, in my opinion," but it's hard to imagine that things could have gotten this far along without anyone in the city's Public Works or Planning and Development Review departments catching this fairly basic error.

Embarrassingly, the revelation came to light the day after a Planning Commission meeting (see "Poor Planning," May 16) whose agenda was dominated by three different cases where Development Review had permitted illegal construction, and zoning change recommendations to retroactively fit the construction on the ground.