Here's an account of that planning meeting from Anna:
Upon arrival, we got into a line to get some materials, including a map of the JKL corridor, pink and blue post-its, and a name tag with a number on it.The number corresponds to a group that we were in for the bulk of the meeting. About 200 or so people showed up! After the majority of people had gone through the lines to get their group numbers, the Mayor said a few words, thanking us for coming, that this meeting wasn't about CineArts or the downtown arena, then a man named Evan spoke. I later found out that Evan works for SMWM, the consultant the city has hired for the downtown revitalization. Evan sent us out on our walking tour and told us that we were to write the things we liked on 5 blue post-its and the things we didn't like on the 5 pinks.
My tour group was led by a woman named Wendy who works for the City's economic development department. Somethings that stood out to me: there is a problem of retail companies not wanting to rent from buildings where the lightrail wheelchair ramp is right in front because it blocks the view of their store. Also,people have a problem with Greyhound. I think she said a developer just bought the block on J Street where the Sewing Machine/Vacuum store is and that made me really sad! I really like the diverse buildings and facades next to each other, I'd had to see blocks bulldozed to make way for a giant ugly building (BTW,I don't even know if the developer will bulldoze, but those were my thoughts.) Oh yeah, Wendy also said that the city has a matching $$ program for businesses that want to improve their facades. She said that when we were in front of a new chinese restaurant in K Street that had a phony Chinese temple stucco look and pointed out that they were a part of the program.
When we went past the Woolworth building site, I told Wendy about my idea of making 10th and K a Sac Cultural Center since Sac is the most diverse city in US. She mentioned that it would be neat if it was a big food market. After we finished our tour and got back to the meeting sight, we put our post-its in awall according to the colors, then Evan gave a slideshow and discussed some of the issues that the city is going through. He also discussed what other cities have done to bring vibrancy. One of the examples was Providence RI trying to attract artists by selling live/work spaces to them for supercheap which created a cool arts community (Michele, you could let us knowif that really happened.)
The next thing was that each group was to discuss our thoughts on downtown and then choose 6 out of 20 things that we thought the city should focus on. While we had our discussion, Wendy was taking notes on a 3 foot high notepad that each group had, which I think will be a part of the evaluation process. My group had a lot of like-minded people on it, it was mostly womenwho live in Midtown or Curtis/Land park. It was in that discussion that a woman brought up her Pike's Place idea for 10th and K, so it seems like a lot of people have the desire for something like that downtown. Then, we were given a giant map of the JKL corridor and we were to design the area according to what we want to see down there, which historic buildings we want to see preserved, etc. This was the point where I felt like it was a sophisticated Monopoly game and that what we were doing was pretty futile. There was a woman in my group that was really into seeing cars back on K Street, from 7th to 10th. Once we were done with this, a representative from each group gave a summary of the group's ideas. There were about 16 groups and the main things brought forth were more housing including "owner-occupied", move Greyhound, historic preservation, don't displace SRO dwellers (erik thinks that there were housing advocates present) and create a food market (several groups said this-Erik's group thought there should be one in the Greyhound site after it is moved).
About Greyhound, the city is going to create an Intermodal Transportation center in the train station area that will bring together Amtrak, Greyhound and lightrail. It probably won't be finished for 10 years,but some people seemed to think that moving Greyhound should be top priority. That was another thing that was a bit annoying, people were put off by anything gritty, which doesn't really surprise me, but come on people, it's a city, what do you expect? Oh yeah, I am kind of impressed with the consultantthat the city hired, SMWM. I got a feeling that they aren't chumps and might do a good job.Cosmo Garvin was there and he is going to do a write up on it soon, maybe next weeks SN&R.
This is very interesting. That sux about people trying to focus on hiding the Greyhound away. It is kind of a hassle to drive on that block, but that's just as much cuz all the cabs hang out as it is because of people stopping for drop-off. Maybe if they kicked out the cabs and increased the loading zone area it wouldn't cause a hold-up. I think that a multi-use transportation area is a good idea, but if it's going to take a while to build, Greyhound should just stay where it is until then. Why spend money to move it twice just cuz some people find seeing/interacting with poor people to be distressing?
About Providence...there is a lot of talk regarding affordable live/work spaces for artists and musicians, but nothing ever seems to progress out of the preliminary plan stage.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that far short of "creating a cool arts community," the history of development in Providence is one of displacing the arts community. Since the 80's (probably earlier) the city has been chasing people out of these huge mills, and turning them into shopping centers or office buildings. Since the recent and famed demise of Fort Thunder, Providence kids set up another cool space and it's already been shut down. There are some pretty cool attempts to revitalize without losing the character of old buildings and stuff, and to their credit they aren't letting outback steakhouses, etc. in...but no matter how cool the consultant group is, they don't understand what affordable means to some of these people. So the cutting edge artists and musicians move to NY, and the city-sponsored art is more mediocre and adult-ish. Like 2nd saturday stuff.
Anyway, here is a link to an article that succinctly describes it all if you are interested:
http://www.providencephoenix.com/features/top/documents/03599594.asp
-michele
Just wanted to add my 2-cents here...
ReplyDeleteOverall, the workshop was a success. A lot of great ideas were generated. While I agree that SMWM (not SWMW, by the way) did a good job in facilitating and providing some great insights about what exists downtown and where we could go in terms of various scenarios, I felt constrained to some of the requirements to focus just on the 10th/K and other pre-determined redevelopment sites on the map. While I don't disagree with the concept of redevelopment, I think that what we really need to do as a community is re-think the vision for the downtown, including the J/K/L corridors, and decide what we really want to see. Everyone says that we need more residents downtown, and more support retail like grocery stores, but then there is a weird fixation on "big projects" as catalysts to bring in more people to spend money. While we certainly do need both forms of economic development for a healthy downtown, it seems like the City looks too much to those big "catalyst projects" as the driving force, rather than creating a truly urban, mixed use 24-hour community that appeals to both current and potential downtown residents, rather trying to compete with suburban shopping malls and big boxes for retail and entertainment that are so obviously designed for lower density suburban locales.
Also - since I work for the City's Planning Division, I'm a bit unsure about what the Mayor may (or may not) do with all of the great ideas that were generated. City planning staff really didn't have much to do with this workshop, and that frustrates me, because the long range & community planning staff do work hard to gather vision and direct land use policy for the future. The City is gearing up to begin a 2-year General Plan update process that will simultaneously update all of the officially-adopted community land use plans, including the one for the Central City/Downtown. The results of this workshop could certainly be used to generate some ideas for that process, but I'm just disappointed that it wasn't more integrated somehow with the City staff's work program. It sort of feels like the Mayor is taking control of a process that should be more broad and focused on downtown as a whole, and that this whole workshop idea was really designed to grease the skids for whatever big redevelopment project is coming next that doesn't have any context or mention in our offically-adopted land use plans.
-Erik