PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
3.18.07

'Place-making' offers an alternative to sprawl

By Alan J. Heavens
Inquirer Real Estate Writer

No one is saying that the era of sprawl has come to a close, but it's safe to say that the suburbs are getting a bit more organized these days.

That organization is taking shape around suburban town centers - walkable, mixed-use areas designed to bring a sense of community to scattered housing developments that could not survive without cars and shopping malls.

At a recent meeting sponsored by the Philadelphia chapter of the Urban Land Institute, University of Miami professor Chuck Bohl said the growth of such "place-making" has come in response to demand, not as a creation of urban planners.

"The run-up in gas prices has been a major driver, of course, but more communities are saying that 'this is what we want and expect,' " said Bohl, author of Place Making: Developing Town Centers, Main Streets, and Urban Villages.

In the early 1990s, when the neo-traditional movement in planning was starting to take shape, there were few examples of place-making and "not a lot to talk about," Bohl said. But by the end of the 1990s, there were plenty of examples.

Changing demographics also are playing a major role in place-making, Bohl said, because households today are not the kind our grandparents knew.

"Fewer than 15 percent of the households have only one worker, and the percentage of [home] buyers that are young singles and couples is growing rapidly," he said.

For this demographic, decisions about where to live depend more on lifestyle and convenience. Communities are marketed not only as places to live, but also as places to work and play, "so the town center is answering a perceived need."

Still, Bohl acknowledged, it is a major task to "take pieces strewn around a metro area and reconfigure them into communities," as the neo-traditional planning movement advocates.

Since World War II, 5 billion square feet of retail space has been developed in the United States, Bohl said, much of it in "single-use" shopping centers saturated with certain types that engage in cutthroat competition to survive.

In creating a village or town center, he said, "you shouldn't get too fixed on retail." A major ingredient in mixed-use development is the residential space above the stores, but "it's the whole market - restaurants, residential [single and multi-family] and retail - that needs to be considered."

Although "place-making" is a new development concept, "real estate fundamentals should not be forgotten," Bohl said. The same due diligence and market studies traditionally used in real estate apply in place-making, as does the ability to translate conventional models - the convenience mart or corner store - into these new formats.

"A great reliance on public spaces [parks and permanently undeveloped land] makes these projects different and not throwaway sites," he said.

Much of the "place-making" that has occurred has been elsewhere - Celebration and Seaside in Florida, and Kentlands in Maryland are cited as the models. But this region offers a growing number of examples.

One is in central New Jersey, where Sharbell Development Corp. is building town centers in Washington Township and Plainsboro.

"Phasing development is a key aspect" of place-making, said Tom Troy, a principal in Sharbell. "If you break development down into manageable pieces, it is easier to accomplish."

That applies to both commercial and residential development.

For the commercial area being developed along State Route 33 in Plainsboro, "development is done block by block, so that the market can readily absorb the product," Troy said.

Residential development also is broken into phases, so buyers can get to see the full diversity of housing styles that will be available - single-family detached, townhouses, condos and multifamily rental.

Mike Lynn of RDM Inc. is one of the developers involved in the Village of Five Points in Sussex County, Del., a new suburban town center surrounded by houses.

The 200-acre tract between Lewes and Rehoboth Beach, about three miles from the ocean, is actually an infill site "between a cement plant and a former dump site," Lynn said.

"The tract had been zoned for agricultural use," he said, but "they couldn't drive the size farm equipment they needed down the roads in the summer," so the land became available.

The goal was to create a plan that "maintained a safe, comfortable environment that could function without total dependence on the car," Lynn said. "We wanted it to work as a neighborhood, not as a subdivision, which would make it a more marketable land plan."

The town center was created as a control axis between villages of mixed residential styles. Everything was done to promote walkability, Lynn said, which was accomplished with "interconnected streets and grid blocks" from the villages through the town center.

The plan calls for 586 residential units in different villages, 40,000 square feet of retail space within the residential neighborhoods, and 90,000 square feet of retail along Savannah Road, the main street.

Thus, density "wheels out of the village-center axis," Lynn said.

So far, 490 units have been sold, "the amenities have been completed," and 75 percent of the space has been leased in the town center, he said. Prices start in the mid-$200,000 range for condos and go up to $500,000 for single-family homes.

Determining what will make neo-traditional communities succeed and thrive often falls to Anton Nelessen, president of A. Nelessen Associates of Belle Mead, N.J., outside Princeton.

His visual-preference survey uses "imaging and computer simulation to try to help the public get a better sense of new kinds of development," he said.

"We know what people want, but we don't know where they want to go," Nelessen said. By using computer imaging in what he describes as a "vision translation workshop," he can synthesize concepts into a "meaningful plan and public presentation."

Vision planning is a fairly straightforward concept, in which every computer image that flashes on a screen in a room causes people to react in a way that can be measured.

A full-range survey can include 80 to 240 computer images in 12 to 14 categories, such as single-family and multifamily development, streets and transitways, industrial and retail uses, and parking.

Nelessen said he tries to avoid words as much as possible, as well as zoning codes, which are incomprehensible to the typical person.

"What we try to do is to provide visual and spatial characteristics and test a range of concepts," he said. "The key to the future is in the visual, not the written word."