Aspen Ridge/Hill Place started out wrong and no superficial views of it now will make it right for those who saw it before, during and after destruction and construction: It is a poster-child of bad development on critical ground-water recharge area

Interesting what one can hear on Government Channel. A wonderful, dedicated Fayetteville volunteer committee member and city leader said in a meeting that he had visited the Hill Place project and found it a great improvement from what he had seen before. He even praised the landscaping! The landscaping is one of the horrible jokes of that project. In addition to chopping off the roots of some of the few protected mature trees in the project's dedicated parkland to provide a space for irrigation pipes for some of the inappropriately chosen saplings planted along the streets, the landscapers have repeatedly added mucky, silty dirt to the surface of the trail edges and the parkland. Had the dedicated Fayetteville volunteer committee member done his due diligence and visited our blogs frequently or reviewed the oldest pre-Aspen Ridge photos online he likely would have pointed out some of the stupid mistakes and just plain arrogant disregard of what the Town Branch neighbors asked for in early meetings with those planning Aspen Ridge and later Hill Place.
Obviously, he hasn't seen our photos of the failed raingardens with mulch repeatedly running off into the storm drains to add debris and silt to the Town Branch of the West Fork of the White River. Obviously, he hasn't noticed our photos of the nonnative landscape plants and the red dirt and other nonnative dirt that several times washed off the landscaped areas and the new TRAIL area onto World Peace Wetland Prairie and Pinnacle Prairie.
The Hill Place project is what the neighbors predicted, not what the developers promised. The railroad slope on the west has repeatedly washed downhill and some buildings have had their carpets replaced because of flooding caused by landscaped areas built uphil from the groundfloor apartments.
And the downstream neighbors face continued increased flooding because of the paving and roofing of all those 30 acres of critical groundwater-recharge area.