Unplanned - A Walmart Wake-up Call

Walmart's hand at an in-town store First, Walmart showed how unprepared communities were for handling sprawl.  Now, the company is doing the same, but for infill.  On February 21, the Sarasota Herald Tribune ran an article on how Walmart is moving to in-town locations for the next wave of growth.   This is unfolding in Sarasota, where the retail giant has proposed a 24 hour supercenter on one of the last best parcels where the urban bone structure is intact.  The sub-text is really interesting, and serves as a good case study for revealing a crisis in planning.

A global shift in the economy and the nature of work - This may not seem like news, but how this translates to community design is still daunting.  Nobody describes the shift better than Michael Freedman of the California-based firm Freedman, Tung and Sasaki.   Fair warning: approaching Freedman’s work is a commitment of at least 90 minutes.  But he strings the narrative together in a way that not only explains, but also says “and here is what we do next.”   This video is great; if you don’t’ have time, there are jump-in points at minutes 23, 45 and 1:06 (or thereabouts).

In Sarasota, the job base has always been a feast/famine affair driven by retirees and the service industry.  The County is now rethinking jobs both within its strong sectors (housing, tourism) and outside the box (design and niche manufacturing).  All of these require exquisite settings – natural, built and creative.  The fact that the County approved only one of two enclosed malls last year and the city is mulling over a Walmart speaks to the utter disconnect on designing for the future of the work they want.  

Plans, codes and skill sets are stuck in time –The hyper-growth of the 1980s, 90’s and early 00’s, coupled with the massive recession that began in 2006, have left a trail of unattended needs (I am writing this after consulting with other friends who also worked in medium sized towns):

• The Sequence - It is becoming apparent that good planning is like developing a financial portfolio with four questions (planning lingo in parentheses): What do you have (asset mapping)?  What do you want (visioning)?  How do you get there (comprehensive planning)? How are you doing (implementation and feedback)?  Communities tend to jump immediately to the end of the process, which is the biggest gap in planning, in my opinion.
• The Scale - There are a lot of comprehensive plans and zoning codes, but not enough of the middle small area plans that link how the big picture and site level details work together.  This vacuum is made worse by funding cuts.  The anemic role of area planning, in my opinion, is the second biggest gap in planning, particularly for infill and sprawl repair.
• Stale Language - There are a lot of codes and plans out there splashed with 1990’s era smart growth language, but not necessarily enough to guide decisions or counteract older language that makes conventional zoning so detrimental.
• Skill Sets - A lot of skill sets out there were developed in the go-go years of master planned communities, conservation development and complete street definitions that made roads wider (ever seen new bike lanes in Florida?).  Cities are facing square peg/round hole frustration as large lot practices for things like stormwater, parking and loading docks are forced onto in-town locations.
• The Punt  - Sprawl has delayed hard discussions on where to redevelop. Determining the attributes of areas ripe for successful redevelopment and then communicating those results requires amazing skill.

The Crisis in Citizen Planning– This is where Walmart is getting really clever. Zoning codes tend to treat the residential interface with other development projects as a protection zone.  Codes describing neighborhood retail centers are replete with words such as “less intense,” compatible, and “aesthetics.”    Walmart has found an ally in outdated code language:

• Less intense – a sea of parking lot drives down the Floor Area Ratio (or FAR).  Walmart can argue they are less intense than a mixed use center.  Intensity has been defined so narrowly (a measure of density for retail) that 24 hour operations, auto orientation and lack of connections don’t register.
• Compatible – Walmart looks for neighbors who support the store, because once one household declares they can live next to a Walmart – the word compatible is drained of meaning.  
• Aesthetics – In Sarasota, Walmart is promising to paint the store beige.  Aesthetics has morphed into comparative aesthetics (it could be worse) instead of a measure of livability.

In Sarasota, an overarching plan for the neighborhood was rejected after a nasty fight over condos.   Foregoing a plan was seen as a protective move, though it only made the neighborhood more vulnerable because intent and aspirations have now been left open to interpretation by Walmart’s lawyers.  Citizen planning, like a lot of environmental planning, is stuck in a bygone, just-say-no era.  Roger Lewis wrote a timely article on zoning which is a great complement to what is happening in Sarasota.

In summary, the planning crisis is a play in (at least) three parts

• Funding for area plans linking multiple landowners, as well as public and private realms.
• Sequence and scale of planning and updates
• Citizen planning for a future by design.

Walmart tends to be the subject of a lot of exposé.  In a twist, Walmart has imposed an exposé on us: communities are unprepared to carry out better infill as part of a community portfolio.

How to Unravel Long Range Planning - A Case Study

On January 30^th, the Sarasota County Board held a hearing to basically loosen up it’s award-winning land use plan called 2050 (Chapter Nine of the Comp Plan).  Now seen as an “unworkable” new urbanist plan, the County interviewed developers to get ideas on how to make it “workable.”

The image show the dividing line with redevelopment and infill to the west and farms to the east

The 2050 plan was adopted in 2004 with six different sections on how to handle redevelopment, greenways and greenfield development.  Any casual observer, though, would swear there was only one: what to do with development outside the Urban Service Boundary (USB).

On paper, the goal was (and still is) laudable. Currently, land use east of the line (roughly Interstate 75) is centered on agricultural and ranch uses, with allowances for ranchettes on 5-10 acre plots served by well and septic. By now, it’s become clear that this is mostly worst-case density:  too small to farm but too big to mow. What matters more, however, are ranchette residents’ urban preferences that bubble up: fast emergency response times, easy access to the city and airport, and a low tolerance for things like the smells and “devil-may-care” porch and yard décor prevalent in the country.

2050 is not that different from how Arlington VA incentivizes preferred growth, though at the opposite end of the urban transect.  Landowners and developers are free to develop under their zoning.  But, if they want to pursue more lucrative land uses, then there are strings.  For 2050, the plan requires New Urbanist plans featuring interconnected, walkable neighborhoods with a variety of housing types, parks and other gathering spots. 

Alas, say the developers, this does not work.  Since 2050’s passage, only two projects have been built, and Lakewood Ranch(which was the model) is only successful in the arena of drive-to development.  Instead, developers would rather build something dependent on golf carts due to the “population age group in Sarasota.”  The land plans would also let them classify lakes as mandated open space and rework developer payments (aka “fiscal neutrality”).   The County Commission agreed to a 90-day window for broader public input.

Joe Barbetta, the most knowledgable Commissioner on urban design, noted “You can’t airlift an urban community and put it eight or nine miles out east” (as covered in the February 1 edition of the Sarasota News Herald).  Bingo – but….

• The County blundered when it requested interviews with developersto point out flaws in 2050. Of course you need insight from developers, but the list includes mostly greenfield developers (or more to the point developers with mostly single use greenfield skills).  Sarasota County's big problem is that there are so few locals with the skills needed to carry out the type of redevelopment that delivers less traffic, more economic development, and great urban design. Part of that lies in 2050’s biggest flaw: developers shot down the middle stage of planning saying that it was too much unpredictability and process.  But it is this scale of planning that delivers.
• In 2011, the County Board dismantled the land use planfor the nearby Benderson project and eliminated 437 units of affordable housing "because the market had changed."  Fast forward 18 months and now housing costs are escalating even as more retail and service economy jobs are added.  One might argue the need for affordable housing never actually went away.  This should be a big lesson: sometimes the short term "no" is for a bigger long term "yes."
• On December 12, the County actually made big changesto the landscape east of I-75, notably moving an interchange.  Given sprawl’s reliance on interchanges and interstates, changing 2050 can’t just be tweaks to select policies.   
• The whole conversation on fiscal neutrality is painful.  Sprawl is rarely fiscally neutral (see this rant on impact fees here). 
• Those funny kids who follow Glenn Beck’s quest to dismantle United Nations voluntary sustainability initiative called Agenda 21are also all over this (at least in Facebook comments).  They want to get rid of 2050’s communistic, United Nations/Al Gore-sponsored central plan to cram people into apartments.  But funny thing happened last week: Beck himself launched his new town, Independence, which will feature sustainable energy, local food, support for local business and attractive gathering places.   Watch his video here – a must see.

Then there’s the design of Lakewood Ranch, which is also known about town as “Fakewood Ranch.”   It is a sprawling landscape that was to have a Main Street as its centerpiece.  Instead, the boutique shops, separated from almost everything, struggle while residents drive to the University Parkway/I-75 interchange strip malls for everyday needs.  Lakewood Ranch is not failing because new urbanism is a failure; it’s failing because it is not new urbanism.  It’s sprawl.

What happens when you hide retail in the center?

The battle has been set: keep 2050 as is, or loosen it.  But that’s a false choice.  The question is:  If not 2050, then what will work to advance the timeless goals of the community: environmental protection, affordable housing, a diversified economy, limits on sprawl for water resources and habitat, and good transportation?  Given the new interchange location, the need to develop the County’s assets at the landfill, the region’s fantastic agricultural sector and tight budgets for years to come, this is not a text amendment.  It’s a whole new plan for east of I-75.  It’s the  sector plan that was missing from 2050 all along.

This saga is likely unwinding around the country as desperate localities are willing to forgo long term plans to get something - anything.  It's how I got started at the tail end of the last recession in the mid-1990's when Home Depot wanted a store at an Arlington Metro station and neighbors galvanized around good urban planning.  Imagine what a short term "yes" would have done.

3-D Printing – Crossing the Chasm and Coming to Sarasota

3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, is all over the tech and geek news-o-sphere (covered lots in BoingBoing, Wired, and Gizmag), but seems to have a hard time jumping from concept lab to commercial uses.

The past two weeks, though, show we are crossing the chasm:

National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII) – This new consortium, located in the Rust/Tech belt, includes the Departments of Defense and Energy, nine Research Universities, five Community Colleges and 11 Non-Profit Organizations.  According to the press release:

"The NAMII will provide the innovation infrastructure needed to support new additive manufacturing technology and products in order to become a global center of excellence for additive manufacturing.  This pilot institute will bridge the gap between basic research and product development for additive manufacturing, provide shared assets to help companies, particularly small manufacturers, access cutting-edge capabilities and equipment, and create an environment to educate and train workers in advanced additive manufacturing skills."

3-D Printing Goes Portable - Two MIT students have developed a 3-D printer in a suitcase.

What does it mean for Sarasota?

First, Fast Company named Sarasota one of the top 10 under-rated hotbeds of innovation.  Certainly the tech incubator the HuB has a lot to do with raising our visibility, but we are also home to lots of design and niche manufacturing.  3-D printing sits in the middle of the Venn diagram where design and making things intersect. 

Second, there was a painful meeting last week on workforce development, as reported in the Sarasota New Leader.  According to surveys, jobs are going un-filled because skills related to engineering and technical processes are lacking.  There was a lot of finger pointing – are the schools not preparing students or are manufacturers not taking an active role in reaching into the curriculum and student pool?   My opinion is that the for-profit colleges offer the best model.  Because of giant pressure on for-profit colleges, they actually have to document (1) the number of students who get jobs and (2) whether or not those students are employed in their field of study.  This has produced aggressive outreach (I was on a task force with Everglades College and saw this firsthand.  It is impressive).  Linking manufacturing skills and the right students is going to take a new type of collaboration (similar to what Career Edge is doing).  This is a perfect match for more nimble, design-heavy applications – in short, 3-D printing.

Finally, 3-D printing is already becoming part of the local curriculum.   GWIZ has the Fab Lab, which has equipment for custom manufacturing.  Local community colleges and schools are acquiring the equipment.  The Manatee County schools have a curriculum for students that covers the entire realm of 3-D printing: drawing, drafting, materials, computers, and finished product.

This still leaves the key question:  if the technology exists, how do we bring it to market in a big, economically powerful way?  Early users include artists and weapons manufacturers (suppose it was inevitable).  However to really scale this up, a community would need to do nothing less than intervene in the supply chain.  Can you imagine a giant scavenger hunt where teams would work with manufacturers and retailers to cull out items that could be produced locally on 3-D printers?

Of course there are potential losers in this disruption.  Injection mold operations come to mind, but importers and certain retailers are at risk.   Disney just announced a new product that creates a princess doll with your kids face using 3-D printing.  Put toymakers on that list too.

To see this infographic, go to 

https://www.hightable.com/technology/insight/infographic-objects-on-demand

Thrown Under the Bus - What We Need in a New SCAT Team

“Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus. “
David Hockney

A couple of weeks ago, the head of Sarasota’s transit operations (SCAT) submitted his resignation, ostensibly because the fire extinguishers had expired the day before.  There is likely more to the story than this, and there was undeniable disruption for a growing cadre of transit riders.  But now’s the time to think ahead.

OK  - So some might wonder why we should think about transit at all – it’s a bus.  But Sarasota’s at a point where it needs to think big about moving people:

• For starters, gasoline is hitting record prices as are local and national ridership numbers.
• Younger people are eschewing the car, according to new research  (and my own observations of my 15 year and his cohort).
• Transit is a big indicator – visitors from Europe and big cities know transit.  Moreover there is a growing “cool” factor to transit, biking and walking.  Even if visitors don’t step foot on a bus, a working, state of the art system send big signals about a community, its priorities and its savvy.   
• It’s a big part of the county budget that’s here to stay – so why not crank it?  Transit is budgeted at $36,000,000 (out of a close to $900,000,000 total budget for the County).

Now that we’ve settled that transit as worthy of lots of attention – here is my wishlist of priorities for the next transit administrator: two of them deal with transit and what the administrator can control and the others are my expectations out of everybody else.

The New Head of SCAT

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) –Like other creative class cities, Sarasota has a Bus Rapid transit project in the making.  This project, expected to cost roughly $100,000,000(of which Sarasotans would kick in $12 million or so), runs from the airport south to Southgate Mall (or where the new Apple Storewas supposed to be going).  But this ambitious project seems to repeat a theme that has dogged Sarasota for the past several years: the attention to innovation sapped attention to the basics.  The BRT project is worth continuing, but you are not going to get public support until we see a kick-ass transit agency on a daily basis.

Technology and SCAT– Shifting from BRT to regular SCAT does not mean abandoning innovation.   In fact, there is a lot that can be done with our system with attention to a couple of things.  First, establish a vision that SCAT will be recognized for deploying imaginative technology that rivals what big cities are doing.  The anemic SCAT TRACneeds to be appified for Android and smart phones to get rid of glitch presentation and make it user friendly.  Second, the vision should be to make those SCAT poles meaningful.  SCAT TRAC assume a potential rider knows more than a typical potential rider actually knows. You don’t have to do it all at once, and you don’t have to roll out Bus Stop Mahal’s.  Small stickers on poles that lead users to the SCAT TRAC and the name of the  stop as it is listed would go a long way (see photo).  For these apps, keep in mind tourists don’t know where they are, or even where the store they want to visit is.  The digital “You are Here” through geolocation is a must. 

Everybody Else

The Public– The past year was hard: we needed to vent.  But now, we need to craft every statement to make a difference.  We need to be the best watchdogs, commentators, data collectors, and researchers we can be for transit.  Fabulous transit does not rest on one person’s shoulders – it is crowdsourced.

County Leadership– First, take SCAT out of Planning and Development Services.  It would be the proper place if our transit system and better land development were feeding into each other.  But it hasn't turned out that way (the isolated Cattleman Station is Exhibit A - but perhaps I need to reserve judgment as the area develops).   Right now SCAT needs to move people.  Make it standalone or put it in Information Technology.  Second, hire somebody from an organization that turned procurement around.  Why not a two-fer?  Third - get a tech savvy entrepreneur - not a whipping boy, not somebody scouting out retirement homes - but a young-ish professional who can inspire.  There are capable people within SCAT for operations.

Others – Anyone supported by public grants or other funds needs to build support for mobility  on their website and in print.  Washington DC set up an entire website targeted to tourists for ”Getting Around” that includes every option  – including by foot and bike.  New York’s MTA has the “Arts for Transit” program to marry arts and transit.  For crying out loud, we have some of the best animation, design and graphics talent in the world here – how can we use it to make getting around easier and more fun?  The private sector can also get involved.  Any app can show stores and attractions for a small amount of money.

Finally - next Thursday April 19th is "Try Transit Day." Free rides - so my expectation is that everyone tries transit!

A-Park-olypse Sarasota

I have a soft spot for angled parking.   Maybe it’s the way more spaces are “found” in downtowns, or that parallel parking seems overly-complicated compared to the simple nature of yanking a shifter into “R” once, and only once.  For that reason, I supported the downtown merchants’ opposition to replacing angled parking with parallel spaces - that is until about 9 am last Thursday. 

That’s when I attended a presentation by SRQ Media Group on its recent Downtown Consumer Study (the must-read powerpoint is here).   The survey was conducted before the latest parking brouhahas erupted – metered parking, adorning a garage with (gasp) murals, and now a proposal to replace angled parking with parallel parking to increase sidewalk widths.  

As the February 9^th breakfast presentation unfolded, Ms. Angled Parking’s “Aha” moment came from this observation: Downtown has a very low attraction rate exclusively for shopping: 8.5%.  Before we can fully appreciate this statistic, let’s consider a couple of points about parking and downtowns:

• The sidewalk widening would be of most benefit to restaurants in the form of more outdoor dining.
• From the presentation, 91 % of people come mostly for dining.  The Farmers Market is also a big draw.
• While parking and garages are often viewed as downtown vibrancy killerers, for Sarasota it is essential.  Approximately 80% of Sarasota respondents came from outside downtown.  Add in tourists, and downtown Sarasota’s market is anything but local.
• Our new, year-old parking garage added 743 vehicle parking spaces, 20 motorcycle spaces and 80 bicycle spaces in the same block where owners are most upset. 
• Finally - the restaurants will have to rely on more than sidewalk width to achieve a fully functioning downtown.  A recent study found "a more critical factor (than street geometry) is the concentration of business activity in a compact commercial center." 

Instead of focusing so much energy on one block of Main Street, we should instead figure out how to move from a downtown where survey respondents come “for dining” to one where locals, visitors and workers are downtown equally for working, dining and shopping.

It seems like a there couple of key points.  First, we need to, at least in the short term, pay more attention to matching diners and Farmers Market patrons to the ability run other errands downtown.  We have a hardware store, banks, health food stores, opticians, services and a new Staples opening soon.  What does a marketing campaign to get all your trips taken care of downtown look like? We need to convince Joe from Palmer Ranch that he can get that hammer while his wife gets the veggies. Second, it's worth noting that Miami Beach has gained a lot of attention by celebrating, not whining about, its garages. Our own garage was recently included in an articleon the trend of parking garage architecture as sculpture.  Finally, the SRQ survey breaks down how people get information on downtown.  Instead of letting the medium drive the message, there seems to be really good information to help targeting or shape further studies needed.

Sarasota is holding a Parking Forum on February 23 from 5:30 pm to 7 at Selby Library where meters, pricing, and other topics are sure to come up.  For more information about the forum, please contact the Parking Services Management Department: 941-954-7057.