A team of nationally renowned urban planners,
housing experts and others are scheduled to descend on Duluth in July to
generate a revitalization plan for eastern downtown.
The city has been chosen as this year's site for
an intensive, nearly weeklong public design workshop known as a charrette. City
officials have scheduled a news conference today to announce the choice by the
Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami School of
Architecture.
"It speaks well of Duluth to have one of our
teams coming," said Charles Bohl, director of the Knight Program. "We do feel
Duluth is ready."
The planning will focus on an area from about
Lake Avenue to the old armory on London Road. Exact boundaries will be
determined next month, said Tom Cotruvo, executive director of the Duluth
Economic Development Authority and a Knight Program fellow this year.
The area already is ripe with revitalization
efforts and ambitious plans as Duluth continues its transformation from
smokestacks and heavy industries to tourism and health care. The charrette will
build on what's already happening, Cotruvo and others said.
Within the area being targeted:
• The $33 million
Technology Village opened in 1999.
• A $15 million
medical building for St. Luke's hospital was completed.
• St.
Mary's/Duluth Clinic's $75 million medical campus expansion is under
construction.
• Plans are being
made to convert the long-closed armory into an arts and music center.
• A Minneapolis
developer announced plans this month for a $25 million hotel and condominium
project at Third Avenue East and Superior Street.
"This is a major opportunity for us," said
Cotruvo, also manager of business development for the city of Duluth. "It's a
chance to focus a planning effort on a part of our city with potential and with
improvements already happening. It's a dynamic area. We want to capitalize on
that."
The experts coming to Duluth include 13
midcareer Knight Program fellows from all over the country. Their areas of
expertise include community development, planning, housing, real estate
development, arts management, transportation, architecture and historic
preservation.
Graduate students from the Suburb and Town
Design Program at the University of Miami School of Architecture will make up
the design team. They'll be led by three or four architecture school faculty
members.
The overall effort will be led by Elizabeth
Plater-Zyberk, a founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which advocates
for center-of-city neighborhoods that are walkable, diverse and within easy
access of parks, shops and jobs. She's also the dean of the architecture school
and principal in the Duany Plater-Zyberk firm. The Miami company has created
plans for more than 200 communities worldwide.
"It's a highly experienced team. They'll work
like consultants," Bohl said.
"It'll be a true public process," he said of the
Duluth charrette. "We'll get the word out to get people involved and to tell us
what they want. In the end, we'll have a plan that truly belongs to the people;
something the community is more likely to implement."
That's how it worked during last year's
charrette in Coatesville, Pa., said Pam Kramer, a Knight Program fellow and an
expert in housing at the nonprofit Duluth Local Initiatives Support Corporation.
Coatesville, a forgotten steel town about 45
miles west of Philadelphia, was eager to revitalize its core and to fix up its
old train station. It hoped to reinvent itself as a home for commuters.
The charrette started with a public kickoff
event. An open house was held midway through the work week to keep the community
in the loop. A presentation on the final day included drawings and plans tacked
up on walls. Residents were invited to sign up for focus groups and to offer
other input throughout the week.
"There's extensive citizen involvement," Kramer
said. "In Duluth, I hope for broad public input.
"This is a unique and exciting opportunity to
redevelop a key part of our downtown," she said. "It's an excellent time to do
this because there's so much already going on. We definitely want a plan that
will be implemented."
Plans produced during a 2001 charrette in Macon,
Ga., are on the verge of being implemented now, said Peter Brown, a Knight
Program fellow and the director of the Mercer Center for Community Development
in Macon.
The Macon charrette focused on a long-neglected
30-square-block area bordering Mercer University in the city of 94,000 people.
The neighborhood is filled with dilapidated homes abandoned after desegregation
by families of white railway workers and black teachers, preachers and civil
servants.
"The charrette was absolutely pivotal in our
community," Brown said. "Everyone -- residents, community leaders, design
professionals, everyone -- had an opportunity to be part of it. Meetings were
packed. So much enthusiasm and energy was built.
"A lot got done in a short time," he said. "It
really gave us a master plan for that neighborhood and a burst of energy that
produces a clarifying vision. There's no question our plan will happen.
"Congratulations to Duluth on getting this
chance," Brown said. "It's going to be a good thing. It doesn't happen
instantly. But the charrette will open up possibilities people in Duluth can't
even imagine are there."
Duluth will be the fourth city chosen for a
charrette since 2001. The other was San Jose, Calif. All the communities are
home to Knight-Ridder-owned newspapers. The News Tribune, Superior Telegram and
Budgeteer News are all owned by the newspaper chain.
Charrette expenses are covered by the Knight
Foundation, Bohl said. Total expenses aren't determined, but assembling a
similar team of experts to produce a similar revitalization plan would cost
communities more than $250,000, he said.
The only cash raised in Duluth for the charrette
was $5,000 provided by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Kramer said.
"We want to help communities that probably
wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to put together this kind of help," Bohl
said. "We're excited to be coming."
