If you could overhaul downtown, what would it look like?
Think back to the last time you were in a thriving, vibrant
urban environment. Maybe it was a neighborhood like Soho
in New York, a waterfront area
like San Antonio’s Riverwalk, or a
plaza in a European capital.
“What did you like about that place?” asks Heidi
Zimmer-Meyer.
Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown
Development Corporation, is putting into words the question that participants
in this weekend’s downtown design charette will be asking themselves in a
variety of ways.
As design professionals, they’ve already been asking — and
answering — that question.
“Many of them have thought long and hard about that,” says
Zimmer-Meyer. “A lot of those folks see the built environment differently than
most of the rest of us.”
“Those folks” are architects, planners, landscapers, even
graphic designers. They’ll converge on downtown Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to
try to answer questions like the one Zimmer-Meyer posed. What makes a downtown
work? What would make you want to go there? Or better yet, return there, again
and again?
This weekend’s design charette has its genesis in a similar
event in 2000. That year, says Joni Monroe, executive director of the RochesterRegionalCommunityDesignCenter
(and the organizer of both downtown charettes), about 200 people showed up.
That day’s suggestions gave birth to a six-month study by the DesignCenter. Some of the results of that
study, in turn, were incorporated into the City of Rochester’s
City Center Master Plan and into its new zoning code.
Monroe has more
ambitious plans for this next charette, which has been in the works for two
years. The public will be allowed to watch the charette unfold on Friday, and there
will be a way for the public to submit comments, but this event is specifically
meant to tap the expertise of design professionals. They’ll be divided into
teams and set to work on a specific area of downtown — Main
Street, for instance, or the East End
— although they’ll also be encouraged to push the boundaries of their
designated zone, if they feel they need to.
The goal, says Monroe,
is “connecting and completing” the various good things that are going on in the
different parts of the city’s center.
“Rochester has a
lot of special projects going on downtown,” she says. “What we lack is a common
vision.”
Zimmer-Meyer puts it slightly differently.
“It’s very much about creating an urban fabric,” she says,
building the right environment as opposed to relying on one or two marquee
projects to transform entire districts.
To that end, there will be teams of another kind of
professional on hand: investment professionals.
“Investors know what would fit with what,” says Monroe.
Their presence, she says, will help ensure that the designers’ plans “create a
development climate that has some consistency.”
The investors, like the designers, will be clustered in
teams that Monroe calls “resource
groups.” They’ll be asked to react to the designers’ ideas as they come up with
them, so “that we have a basis in reality in terms of investment,” says Monroe.
If the charette weren’t structured that way, points out
Zimmer-Meyer, “you could end up with a lot of pretty pictures that aren’t
achievable in the real world.”
Including financial
types is critically important to Bill Pritchard, a member of City Council
and chair of its jobs, economic development, and center-city committee.
Pritchard says he is excited about the charette, but is guarded in his optimism
over how much it can achieve. That’s true particularly because of the
lackluster regional economy.
Ideas for reshaping and redeveloping downtown need to be
“grounded in today’s reality,” he says. “One of the realities is limited
funding.”
“On the one hand, you want to dream big,” says Pritchard.
“But on the other hand, unless you’ve got a pot of gold, those dreams will
never become a reality.”
Bringing investors to the design table helps soothe that
concern.
“Joni has worked very hard in her preparation to make sure
that balance will be struck,” says Pritchard.
If all goes according to plan, this weekend’s event will result in a fairly specific set of design
plans for downtown.
Monroe pulls out
a thick book, professionally bound and printed on glossy paper. This is what
resulted from a similar effort in Providence, Rhode
Island, a city that was in substantially worse shape
than Rochester when it undertook
its project, says Monroe. The book
contains page after page of crisp renderings — specific, buildable projects,
not concepts or master plans — made by architects and landscapers of a city
they envisioned imposed over the one they saw.
“The City of Providence
has found this to be invaluable,” she says.
Then Monroe
pulls out another, newer Providence
volume. This one contains before-and-after shots: the sketches magically
brought to life.
That’s what she’s hoping to achieve here.
“None of the things that are going to come out of this are
going to be like rocket science,” Monroe
says. “What’s working with other cities that we could do here?”
Rochester has
the ingredients for a great urban environment, says Monroe.
“Our infrastructure is great,” she says. “We have a treasure
trove of beautiful buildings. Most cities would give their eyeteeth to have
what Rochester has.”
Now it’s just a matter of knitting it all together.
Should this charette succeed — and Monroe
believes it will — “it’s going to be a landmark in the history of the city.”
Friday’s planning
sessions for the downtown charette, “Making Downtown Livable,” are open to
the public, from noon to 6 p.m. at MidtownPlaza. (The Saturday and Sunday
sessions are not open to the public.) A week later, Friday, January 26, there
will be a presentation to the public at the Downtown United Presbyterian
Church. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.,
with the presentation from 7 to 8 p.m. The event is free.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2007.
