Charles Marohn of Strong Towns to speak on community development

By Dave Schwab | SDUN Reporter

Hillcrest 2.0, the umbrella under which several community meetings have been held to discuss future development, is hosting a curbside chat.
Organized by the Hillcrest Business Association (HBA), feedback from these meetings will be included in the input of Hillcrest businesses in rewriting Uptown’s neighborhood plan.

At the curbside chat, developers of Hillcrest 2.0 will discuss its progress on Tuesday, April 17, at 5 p.m. The forum will take place at the Bamboo Lounge, located at 1475 University Ave.

Charles Marohn, executive director of Strong Towns, will give a presentation at the forum. Strong Towns is a national nonprofit offering a growth model to help communities become fiscally stronger.

“It’s a small idea that sort of grew,” said HBA Executive Director Benjamin Nicholls. “Part one was the basic operations. Hillcrest 2.0 is the next generation.”

With two years of planning, organizing, gathering speakers and hosting community meetings, Hillcrest 2.0 has involved a series of workshops attended primarily by Hillcrest business owners focused on formulating a collective vision for future redevelopment. The ideas from these forums are included in the HBA recommendations to the revised Uptown Community Plan.

“We had five forums over the course of 14 months, each with a different topic,” Nicholls said. “We’ve invited speakers to come from academia [and] from industry.”

Noting business owners typically focus on the short term rather than the long term, Nicholls said Hillcrest 2.0 is a way to broaden and lengthen their perspective about long-term community development, while allowing their input into the City’s ongoing Uptown neighborhood plan update. “The way that Hillcrest grows and develops over time will be critical for [businesses],” Nicholls said. “They want to see Hillcrest encourage small business.”

Nicholls said Hillcrest 2.0 forums have been run more like business mixers than formal city planning functions. That, he said, adds to their interactivity and the free exchange of ideas between business owners and community members.

At one 2.0 forum on planning density, Nicholls said attendees fashioned their own scale models for future development using building blocks. “Each participant had to find room for their building, where new apartments and other buildings would go to further growth in Hillcrest, while preserving neighborhood character,” Nicholls said.

Community members are invited to the April 17 curbside chat to learn how to apply these ideas to their own businesses.

Marohn said his presentation will be about the “new realities” of post-World War II development, using a growth model for economic redevelopment.
“We recommend the first step is to stop building in this [suburban] development pattern,” he said. “Communities need to reevaluate their capital improvement plans … look through the lens of return on investment [and ask] how [to] make your places more valuable.”

Marohn said the new model concentrates on quality rather than quantity. “Instead of focusing on how much new growth we can create, we show how much value can be squeezed out of our existing investment [and] how we make those investments go further,” he said.

SIDEBAR:

Following the first series of Hillcrest 2.0 forums, the HBA released 17 recommendations it is asking the City to consider in the revision of Uptown’s neighborhood plan, expected to be released later this year.
Some of those recommendations include:

• Encourage a diverse mix of businesses providing a variety of goods and services
• Encourage sidewalk cafes and other businesses that utilize the public right-of-way
• Increase street security to address issues related to homelessness
• Create a “National Main Street” on University Avenue that draws together both ends of the neighborhood
• Develop a specific entertainment district
• Development of a restaurant marketing district
• Set aside developer impact fees for transportation, open space and parking infrastructure
• Include inventive, mixed-use design elements that create harmony between uses in new development
• Place retail and office space between street front uses and residential spaces for noise control and other buffering purposes
• Encourage alternative public and private transportation elements
• Create a transportation hub connecting travelers to other modes of transportation such as bike routes
• Create incentives for private developers to fund open spaces and parks
• Create developer incentives to encourage private investment in public spaces and streetscape furnishings such as public art, patterned sidewalks, trash cans, solar trash compactors, benches, trees, banners and water fountains