Mill Plaza Study Committee: Vision for a New Village Center

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CBI Practitioners:

Patrick Field

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Issue

Prompted by local officials’ hopes to revitalize Durham with a new “village center,” Mill Plaza owner John Pinto invited the town to “develop its vision for the future” of his central downtown property.  The Town Council formed the multi-stakeholder Mill Plaza Study Committee to develop a conceptual plan that would enhance the local tax base and link the surrounding business district, college campus, residential neighborhoods, and brook-side green space.  Durham’s unique community engagement plan also resulted in a grant for AIA design support.  Together, Durham and the AIA were to create publicly-vetted recommendations to help the owner and private developer finalize a permittable design plan.

History/Background

Unlike many college towns, Durham, NH lacks a recognizable and thriving town center.  In early 2006, local officials began looking at the Mill Plaza property as a potential site for creating a more connected community space—a “development" idea that Durham’s diverse campus and town interests could support.  Mill Plaza sits in the core of the town’s Central Business District, bordered by the University of New Hampshire campus, a faculty residential neighborhood, Main Street, and College Brook.  The site’s two buildings house “strip mall”-style retail stores and the town’s library; its surface parking lot remains largely unused and inaccessible to other downtown visitors.  As early as 1995, the Town’s Community Development Plan noted that the property is “not used to its potential,” and recommended engaging the owner to improve the space.

With owner John Pinto’s support, the Town Council passed a resolution forming the Mill Plaza Study Committee in November 2006.  The group’s twelve members represented the property owner, faculty neighborhoods, university, library, Town Council, Durham Planning Board, Historic District Commission, Landlords Association, and Business Association.  The MPSC was charged with developing a future vision for the site, including considerations of tax value, community gathering space, traffic, impacts on local neighborhoods, and the views of the community and property owner.  The new Committee also received a grant for pro bono design and planning support from the New Hampshire Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANH) as part of the AIA’s 150th anniversary “Blueprint for America” initiative.  The AIA150 team was interested in Durham as a model for a different—and better—way to engage communities in design and permitting processes.

Process to date

The overarching goal of the MPSC/AIA150 process was to create a conceptual design plan that the site owner could shape into a successful (and publicly supported) permit application.  The collaborative team developed a plan to meet those goals: they would gather community and expert input from private interviews and the diverse MPSC members, present design options in three rounds of public charrettes, and narrow those ideas into a conceptual plan for the owner’s permitting application.

Facilitator Patrick Field of CBI was selected by the AIA in May 2007.  Mr. Field helped the MPSC and AIA150 team structure their collaboration with a formal Work Plan and guidelines for their consensus-based partnership, including standards of transparency related to members’ personal interests in the redevelopment. The full group met twice monthly for twelve months, and a coordinating committee held additional meetings to set agendas, prepare drafts of documents, and work with the AIA design teams. The process also included significant amounts of public participation: open committee meetings, an on-line comment space, focus groups, a site walk-through, televised public meetings, and multiple public forums and design workshops.  Additional stakeholder input was gathered through private outreach.

The group compiled community and expert input into a number of foundational documents and reports. They prepared a Vision Statement, Data Report (supporting the vision with a Site Analysis and economics), analysis of stakeholder interests, and a set of parameters for the designers.  To provide consistent standards for evaluation, the group tied these documents to accepted community or industry principles, including past community development plans, the AIA Principles on Living Communities, and the LEED Neighborhood Development standards.  Expert environmental and financial consultants (funded by the town and property owner) provided additional reports.

Based on the Data Report and design parameters, three design teams of AIA150 partners generated preliminary designs to present to the community in three rounds of public workshops.  After each round, the MPSC/AIA150 team met to review the public feedback and set revised design parameters for the next round.  The last charette combined the three teams’ previous work into a single “hybrid” design.

The Committee’s final task was to build consensus on an official report of recommendations to the Town Council.  Before drafting the report, the facilitator and a small group of committee members met with the owner and potential developer to discuss the MPSC/AIA150 team’s work.  The owner expressed surprise at the group’s success, but was willing to work with the MPSC recommendations as long as they didn’t set strict limitations for his own plans.  His developers also showed some hesitation—their design expertise related to renovating strip malls, not transforming strip malls into vibrant community space.  After hearing this feedback, Committee members expressed concern that the private developers would overlook their efforts.  They opted to make strong recommendations and suggest the possibility of reconstituting the Committee for further collaboration with the owner.

Results

The process resulted in a Final Report featuring seven recommendations for the new “village center,” including a final “hybrid” design that had already received a positive response from the community.  The Committee’s vision for a pedestrian-friendly downtown would allow residents to park in hidden lots within the development and walk to the grocery store, small shops, river path, campus, residences, new library, or civic buildings.  The plan also incorporated “LEED for Neighborhood Development” green building standards (LEED-ND), the AIA 2030 Carbon Neutral Criteria, protection for College Brook, and the AIA Living Communities principles.  In May 2008, the New Hampshire Planners Association deemed MPSC’s plan the “2008 Plan of the Year” for its design-based approach to integrating the existing strip mall into a revitalized downtown Durham.  Although the town’s original goal was to break ground in 2009, economic conditions have delayed the project until greater funding is available.

Lessons Learned

  • The community shared a desire for a “town center” that would build community and broaden the tax base, allowing the project to gain popular support in a typically development-resistant town.
  • A transparent and inclusive process led to significant community support and involvement.
  • The property owner’s openness to community input was key in engaging stakeholders early in the design process, rather than after developers had created their own plan.
  • A diverse Committee brought representatives of most relevant stakeholder groups to the table, including abutters, members of town associations, property owners, tenants, town council members, and the owner.
  • Clear guidelines for collaboration were developed by the group along with their Work Plan, and with the assistance of a facilitator.
  • Reliance on quality standards for evaluation helped build support for the MPSC’s work.  Criteria included industry standards (the AIA principles and LEED-ND criteria), community-based documents (the Durham Master Plan and Community Development Plan, effort-specific documents (the Council Resolution and Committee Vision Statement), and continuous public feedback.
  • Diverse opportunities and technical resources for public feedback meant many people could participate in a range of different ways, including public forums, focus groups, a site walk-through, a website and email address, televised meetings, and open committee meetings.