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 Studio Open Hours Pin-Up of Work in Progress ALL ACTIVITIES OPEN TO THE PUBLIC |
Home > Charrette Journal > 12.07.07 |
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 December 7, 2007 – Residents and business people in Northeast San Antonio can evaluate the first draft of ideas for shaping 300 acres south of the former Windsor Park Mall at a “pin-up” session tonight at 6 at the Windcrest Civic Center. The event amounts to a mid-term exam for Andres Duany’s design team, which has taken over the Civic Center for a weeklong charrette to create a plan for the parcel owned by the Urban Real Estate Group. [ STORY CONTINUES BELOW PHOTOS > ]  Already, the charrette seems to have inspired some of the residents. “I’m enthralled,” said Windcrest neighbor Inge Geiger. “I have missed only one meeting. I enjoy that so many people can come together and throw out ideas in a peaceful situation.” Where’s the beefing?Duany tried out some of the concepts-in-progress on those who attended meetings Wednesday and Thursday. His main concern, said the planner/architect: “I’m worried that I’m not hearing from those with reservations about what we’re doing. Are people being too polite or just silent? Or is everyone as interested and supportive as those of you who’ve been coming to our meetings?”Geiger, who moved with her husband to Windcrest in 1999, said, “Some people might be afraid of change. They say, ‘I like it the way it is.’ But we can’t survive by just trying to keep it the way it is.” Duany, however, didn’t have much luck teasing out dissent. Most of the meetings featured heads nodding in agreement and questions that encouraged the design team to push the envelope. Welcoming green innovationOne path the Duany team is exploring is to create an opportunity for experimentation in “explicit green” planning and building. “It’s not enough anymore,” said Duany, “to simply tell people you are using environmentally friendly techniques and materials. You have to make it obvious. You have to show the solar panels and the wind turbines.”For the pin-up tonight, attendees will see a couple of variations on block clusters that allow for experimental variations on architecture and public space to maximize opportunities for raising green standards. (Click here for a fuller explanation.) Urbanizing the highway corridorAnother idea likely to be floated tonight at the Civic Center studio is a plan for redevelopment along the I-35 corridor that creates a new Main Street parallel to the access roads. Big box retail and fast food franchises can retain their parking in back along the access roads. But the lots will be better screened from the highway, and the buildings will present more pedestrian-friendly frontages to the new Main Street. Along that new street will be an array of retail and restaurants mixed with housing appropriate to a more urban context.To shoppers and restaurant-goers strolling along that street, the highway might as well be miles away. |
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