The Chicago Plan Commission meets today to discuss, among other things, the Chicago Central Area Action Plan.

The plan identifies and prioritizes urban-design, open-space and transportation projects in the area bounded by North Avenue on the north, the Stevenson Expressway on the south, Lake Michigan on the east and Halsted Street on the west. It also includes the West Loop area bounded by Halsted Street on the east, Ashland Avenue on the west, Lake Street on the north and the Eisenhower Expressway on the south.

Eighteen members, appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, sit on the the Plan Commission, created in 1909 as part of the Burnham Plan for Chicago. The commission does not have statutory power to enforce its recommendations.

The Central Area Action Plan is item D3 on today's agenda. I'll update this post as discussions at the meeting move forward.

Plan passes | 2:53 p.m. The commission recommends the plan after several City Council members praise Haller's work.

Resident speaks out | 2:38 p.m. South Loop resident Enrique G. Perez says he opposes the plan because it would bring too much density to the neighborhood. Tall buildings would strain resources in the area, he says, "and fundamentally change the character of the South Loop and the quality of life for its residents."

"There is also a social-justice problem," Perez says, pointing to lower-income areas of Chicago that would welcome $15.5 billion for struggling residents.

Fioretti flashback | 2:26 p.m. Ald. Bob Fioretti (D-2) recalls a childhood memory to illustrate the importance of an urban vision like the Action Plan, which he supports.

He tells of how, as a child, his mother took him to the top of the Prudential Building, then the tallest in the city.  She held him up, and he, looking at old train tracks just south of the building, said they should be covered up for a park. Millennium Park now sits over those tracks.

"Look at what we have now," Fioretti says.

Two other aldermen speak in support of the plan. None rise against it.

"A big number" | 2:16 p.m. Haller explains that the plan would cost $15.5 billion, with the bulk of it, $14.24 billion, going toward transportation projects. The rest would go to urban design.

"We acknowledge this is a big number," Haller says.

No kidding.

"Way beyond our expectations" | 1:53 p.m. Benet Haller, the city's director of urban design and planning, gives an overview of the plan's goals and background. He says residential development in the area grew much faster — "way beyond our expectations" — than city officials anticipated from 2000 to 2007.

He calls residential development "geographically free," rather than concentrated in the Loop and within one or two blocks north and west of the Chicago River, like office development. Areas just south of the Loop have "undergone a very dramatic change" in terms of residential development, he says.

Haller describes it as "certainly much more of a residential neighborhood and less of a warehouse district."

He says the plan under discussion builds on a 2003 version by updating these development trends, refining goals and projects, pricing and prioritizing them and identifying funding needs and phasing. He details several people in charge of the plan, including some private-sector folks.

I'll ask for his full slide show after the meeting.