Christmas is coming, and Midtown Mall is dressed for the season.
Lunchtime shoppers walk past ornaments and wreaths, and the mall’s trademark
aerial train hangs overhead. But the number of shops in the mall has dwindled,
and Midtown is beginning to show its age. Gone is Santa’s cheery entourage of
elves and reindeer; gone is the sparkling white castle that used to loom in the
background.
Nostalgia for the Midtown Plaza-Sibley area abounds, says
Joni Monroe, executive director of the RochesterRegionalCommunityDesignCenter,
an organization that helps neighborhood groups improve their communities. Plans to revamp Midtown and its
surroundings continue to generate a lot of buzz. In June, for example, the
Urban Land Institute — a national consulting organization — conducted a
week-long study of the Midtown area at the request of the Rochester Downtown
Development Corporation. While some of the Institute’s suggestions, including
tearing down Midtown, may appear radical, they have given the community
something to think about, Monroe
says.
Inside the DesignCenter’s
headquarters in the HungerfordBuilding
on East Main Street, Monroe
pulls out a 2-foot by 2-foot board depicting Midtown and the area within a
quarter-mile radius. Buildings are marked in black, and open spaces, such as
parking lots, are in white.
The diagram foreshadows the DesignCenter’s charrette of the downtown
area, planned for March 23 to 26 at MidtownPlaza. The goal of a charrette,
which typically pairs citizens with design professionals, is to give residents
a sense of ownership over their environment, Monroe says. Charrettes, she says,
“have been around and popularized in the last five to 10 years as a way for
community-based planning to happen.”
Locally, the charrette process usually begins when an
individual or group contacts the DesignCenter requesting help revitalizing
an area. The center, partnering with the local branch of the American Institute
of Architects, then draws in other citizens and community leaders and conducts
a brainstorming session. There, people form teams with design professionals to
generate ideas.
The downtown charrette, however, departs markedly from
previous models. Because it will be based loosely on the Urban Land Institute’s
findings, Monroe says, it has
already moved past the brainstorming stage. Although citizens remain integral
to the process, she says, the Midtown charrette teams will be composed only of
design professionals. DesignCenter
staff and involved AIA members are optimistic that this charrette will provide
more than just a conceptual model.
“These drawings will probably be more complete thoughts from
the get-go,” Monroe says, noting
that, as always, charrette participants must answer the central question: “What
is the glue that holds all this together?”
While excited about the Midtown charrette, Monroe
says the DesignCenter
must do more than hold that event to draw people into the process. Many people
can see that something’s wrong with their community, but have a hard time
pinpointing the problem. To bridge that intellectual gap, the DesignCenter will hold its first lecture
series, featuring city leaders and urban-revitalization experts from across the
country.
Titled “Reshaping Rochester!
Planning for the Public Realm,” the series will kick off January 11 and
conclude in May with the group’s third annual Design Matters conference. This
year’s conference will focus on both city and village centers. Speakers will
include Charleston, South Carolina, Mayor Joseph Riley, Jr.,who is credited with increasing
racial harmony, decreasing crime, and revitalizing his city’s historic
downtown; Jeremy Harris, Honolulu’s former mayor and urban-sprawl foe; and
James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Geography of Nowhere,” which probes how
highways and mega-malls have blighted America’s landscape. It may seem to be
humorless fare, but Monroe says many of the lecturers, especially Kunstler,
will keep the audience entertained.
“All you have to do is open that book and read the first
paragraph, and you’ll know what I’m talking about,” she says. “He has a very
tongue-in-cheek approach. He can help us look at some of the things that we’ve
done and laugh at ourselves, even though some of those things are profoundly
sad.”
In keeping with its visual orientation, the DesignCenter is adding one more event to
its spring program: a design exhibit in a gallery in the Center’s Hungerford
offices. The walls, which currently display an informal array of ongoing and
completed charrettes, will soon be plastered with design models submitted by
local and national architects and designers.
A jury of DesignCenter and AIA board members and
local architects will vote on entries later this month. Promising submissions
include a Charleston city master
plan from Urban Strategies in Toronto
and a design for a park in Brooklyn. Locally, Chait
Studios in Rochester submitted its design for Spot Coffee in downtown
Rochester. “The goal of the show is to highlight good public places,” says DesignCenter employee Audrey Stewart.
Later, the exhibit will travel to malls, libraries and other locations.
Architect Richard Pospula, head of the local AIA chapter, says the exhibit,
coupled with the lecture series, Midtown charrette, and May conference,
reflects the DesignCenter’s
emergence as an important player in the area’s urban-redesign process.
Information about the
lecture series and other events is available from the DesignCenter, 271-0520; www.rrcdc.org.
Schedule of events
The RochesterRegionalCommunityDesignCenter will sponsor a series of
lectures and other events this winter and spring, focusing on urban
revitalization. Other local institutions also will host related events during
that period. Here’s the schedule:
January 11: “Master
Plans for Great Cities,” lecture by Charleston,
South Carolina, Mayor Joseph Riley, Jr.; 7 p.m. at the Harro East Ballroom.
January 27: Reshaping
Rochester! exhibit and gallery
opening; 5 p.m. in the DesignCenter’s Maguire Gallery of
Architecture and Design, 1115 East Main Street.
February 1 (date
tentative): “Designing for Sustainable Communities,” lecture by former Honolulu
Mayor Jeremy Harris, 7 p.m. at the MemorialArtGallery.
February 11: Rochester
AIA Design Awards at MAG.
March 8: “Retail
and Economic Revitalization,” lecture by Michigan-based urban planning
consultant Robert Gibbs, 7 p.m.,
(location pending).
March 22: “Rethinking
our Public Realm,” lecture by John Norquist, CEO and president of the Congress
for New Urbanism, 7 p.m. at ChristChurch.
March 23 to 26: Design charrette for the MidtownPlaza
area, at MidtownPlaza.
April 6: “The Future
of Downtown,” panel discussion hosted by the MemorialArtGallery
at MAG.
April 12: “Our
Modern Urban Landscapes,” lecture by James Kunstler, author of “The Geography
of Nowhere,” 7 p.m. at the German
House.
May 17: “RevitalizingCity and Village Main Streets,”
lecture by Norman Mintz, head of the 34th Street
Partnership, Manhattan, 7 p.m. at the FirstUniversalistChurch
downtown.
May 18 to 20: “Design
Matters III Conference: CityCenter,
VillageCenter”
at various locations, including the DesignCenter. The conference will include
neighborhood tours and workshops.
Tickets are $50
for the six-lecture package, $10 for individual-lecture advance tickets, and
$15 at the door.
This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2005.
