Results in Uptown Planning Group Election a Sea Change Against Pro-Developer Slates

Vote Portends Trend in Local Community Planning Group Elections

By Mat Wahlstrom

The result of the Uptown Planners community planning group election concluded Tuesday, March 1, gives reason to hope for authentic community advocates.

With 925 ballots counted, all three of the Uptown for All candidates came out on top by almost 2-to-1. Despite a lower turnout, this is about the same margin as in last year’s election when we won all eight open seats.

This time around the desperation was on the side of the self-identified YIMBYs, the Rise Uptown slate. They somehow paid for a five-figure direct mail piece to every Uptown household. But unlike the targeted letter we self-funded last year, theirs was a glossy postcard heavy on hype but light on substance.

Uptown for All went for the riskier but time-honored route of delivering flyers by hand and talking door-to-door about the issues.

Rise Uptown doubled down on their support for the City’s proposed ‘Plan Hillcrest,’ which calls to remove all parking and all personal vehicles from University Ave between 6th Ave and Park Blvd — turning it into the C St of Uptown — and for entitling over 40,000 new units within 400 acres.

Conversely, they campaigned as they alleged so-called NIMBYs would, by telling anyone they identified as not living in Hillcrest that they needn’t worry about extra density in *their* neighborhoods — their candidates would work to ensure it all gets packed into Hillcrest instead.

And rather than engage on what they were for, they browbeat anyone carrying Uptown for All literature toward poster boards with deconstructions of its flyer more meme-worthy than credible.

This backfired, as most of those informed of the obvious knock-on effects of Plan Hillcrest naturally balk. But rather than check their neoliberal cheerleading, they tried to gaslight what people could see for themselves.

In sum, despite spending more money and more cleverly trying to obscure their pro-developer message, what these partisans advocate was again key to their defeat.

There’s a lesson here for all of us.

North Park is the other community planning area with a “Rise Up” affiliate running a slate this year. Their election will be a hybrid of online and in-person voting. The deadline to register for the online component is before midnight today, March 7, at this link,

In-person voting will be held on both Saturday, March 12, and Tuesday, March 15, and information on times and locations can be found at this link, .

Here is a link to the map showing which CPGs cover where you live.

And here is the link to the schedule for when each will be holding theirs, with either a Planning Department page with election notices or separately maintained websites for finding out who is running and how to participate.