RE: Palouse Mall concerns

["Shahab Mesbah" <meteor2@moscow.com>]

Dear Madeline,

We are not asking for a digital picture of the proposed plan... we are
asking for a drawing picture like the ones on the web but from the view of
the road. The top view is good for showing where the trees and the path are
but does little to show what the finished product looks from the road (the
view that most of us are concerned with). It does not have to be fancy, just
accurate! We want to see what it will look like when it is done. We can see
what it looks like now. Based on that information we can derive an educated
opinion. Until then we are all talking about theoretical stuff!

Please respond through V2020 so the rest of the friends can stay abreast of
the discussion.

Truly,

Shahab...


-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon and Madeline Edgren [mailto:edgren@iea.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2001 11:07 AM
To: meteor2@moscow.com
Subject: Palouse Mall concerns

Dear Bill and Shahab,

Thank you for your continuing concern about the Palouse Mall Landscape
Proposal. I would like to make
another try at clarifying some points since it appears that there are
still some areas of real mis-
communication between us. Since you appear to have overlapping
concerns, I have taken the liberty of
addressing this to both of you.

First, I would like to reiterate that it was the landscape design that
I described as "worn out" - not the plants
and trees themselves. However, in trying to answer your inquiry as to
why the plan called for removal of
some plants and trees, both Sean Michael and I pointed out that there
are trees and shrubs in the frontage
that are diseased, aging,  crowding other plants, or positioned in
unsafe locations.  This is not something that
Palouse Mall is making up for our convenience. This has been verified
by professionals. If you will reread
my prior letter, however, you will notice that I said that we would be
leaving most of the trees, even though
some of them have problems. We will deal with replacing these only
when and if we have to.  And as Sean
Michael said, the number of diseased and aging plants is limited, and
no plants are being removed wantonly.
Each and every one has been cataloged and analyzed individually, and
those which need to be removed
have been identified individually and are listed on the plans Sean
will present on Monday. In addition, the
plants we will be putting back will not be the smallest we can buy.
They will be the size that is recommended
to us by the professionals to be the optimum size for survival and for
the site.

Second, respectfully, I believe that Shahab misunderstood my comments
about the perspective (elevation)
view of the landscape. It is producing the photos to best portray this
view, not putting them on the Web, that
would take the time and money. Each digital picture of the existing
terrain would need to be digitally
enhanced with the proposed shrubs and trees, a process that takes, if
my memory serves me, more than six
hours per picture. This can be a cost of hundreds of dollars per
picture. If I may express my opinion here,
that money is much better spent buying trees and shrubs and putting in
the recreational path. With the
exception of  two or three representative photos, we elected early in
the process not to produce these
pictures.

To review Sean's explanation of our Web presentation, the file type
that Sean works with for his drawings
does not convert to a file type that can be posted on the Web. To
produce a file that can be posted, he needs
to print the 8 ' drawings, which then must be scanned at a specialty
company in Spokane, and converted to
a file type that can be posted. This, too, is an expensive operation,
so we chose to produce, from the views
available to us, the one that we thought would be the most readable
and give the broadest base of information
to the greatest number of people. We fully realized that, no matter
which view we chose, there would be
people who would disagree with our choice. However, our thinking was
that since we could produce on paper
the other views for the council meeting, people would still be able to
see them. I do not believe that Sean
will be using PowerPoint in his presentation on Monday, as he has
described other media for his
demonstrations. However, his presentation will be comprehensive and
will not attempt to hide anything from
the public.

Finally, my sending carbon copies of my e-mails to others was an
attempt to update several people who
have worked very hard on this project on the content of the
conversations I was having. I wanted to make
sure that every e-mail got answered, but that we didn't have
needlessly overlapping answers, since all of
these people were standing by to contribute if their expertise was
needed.

The agreement between Palouse Mall and the City of Moscow specifically
calls for us to "refurbish and
improve" the site. I believe Sean Michael,  Wil Sinclair and Andrew
Tull have done an outstanding job of
designing well beyond that criteria. They have produced a plan  that
should make Moscow proud for decades
to come. I hope you will give us a chance, but if that is not
possible, I want to say again that we have
appreciated your input.

Sincerely,

Madeline Edgren
Palouse Mall Associates, LLC