If you’ve ever driven through the Red Smith Neighborhood on the east side of Green Bay, then you already know, its a pleasant and good looking area. It’s one of those communities that we’d all like to call home in Northeast Wisconsin.

Which is why the residents there couldn’t expect it to stay that way forever (story HERE). Growth was always going to be inevitable.

Still, that’s where we’re at as the community is slated for 400 units of new housing, including both single family homes and apartments.

I understand how residents who have been there a while would want it to stay the same. But that’s an unrealistic reality that residents all over the country realize every year.

Your community can’t stay frozen in time. It will change. The best you can do is try to collaborate and have your voice heard throughout the process.

And to their credit, some of the residents tried to do that. But during the council meetings, they could offer little more than the usual complaints you hear about growth. More traffic. More kids in school. More people in your neighborhood. You can’t debate against growth, you can only debate why it should happen a certain way. The right way.

And Red Smith is growing the right way.

While it’s always easy to criticize the community you’re in, you have to look around the country. I have seen rampant uncontrolled growth. Forget 400, I’ve seen 1,200, 1,600, unit projects completely decimate a community. And many times, it prices out the natives. I know this. It happened in my old hometown of Orlando.

That’s not the case here. This is calculated growth taking place over a span of years.

It’s cause for optimism. Not for concern.