Boone council opts

for ‘charrette’ path

to town’s smarth growth
By Frank Ruggiero
ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com

If you’re going to grow, grow smart.

The Boone Town Council embraced this concept by adopting measures to establish an environment of smart growth in Boone.

The council commissioned a smart growth audit in spring 2007 and received its results this past January, the first recommendation of which calls for the creation of a master land use plan.

At the presentation, John Cock, associate planner with the Lawrence Group, the organization that conducted the audit, said the plan should be detailed to the parcel level, identifying transportation infrastructure and areas to be preserved. The map would identify where higher-density growth should occur and areas that should be left alone.

The results and assessment were based on 10 smart growth principles from the Smart Growth Network: Mix land uses, take advantage of compact building design, create a range of housing opportunities and choices, create walkable neighborhoods, foster communities with a strong sense of place, preserve open space, direct growth toward existing communities, provide a variety of transportation choices, make development decisions fair, predictable and cost-effective, and encourage community and stakeholder collaboration.

Community and stakeholder collaboration will be paramount in the process, Boone Development Services director John Spear said.

At the town’s planning retreat in January, council members set the wheels in motion by approving a time table and funding for the planning process. It will include community members, economic development specialists, urban design specialists, architects, transportation engineers and others, Spear said.

The tricky part? All of this is to be accomplished in a week.

This is done through a “charrette,” an intensive multi-day, multi-disciplinary public planning and design workshop.

“It involves the whole planning process, but it’s done in a very compressed amount of time,” Spear said. “If you went with the conventional method of planning and public input and were only meeting monthly, it’d probably take two years.”

The benefits of a charrette, Spear said, is that multiple disciplines are brought together at once, meaning a considerable amount of work is completed upfront in the planning process. After the first few days of the design charrette, preliminary findings are presented, then revised, then presented for further feedback, refined again, and then presented again.

“It all happens in that one compressed time slot, so you can actually work and develop something like that in a much more timely manner,” Spear said.

In a memorandum to council members, Spear estimated a viable land use master plan could be completed within a six- to eight-month period, with the total cost ranging from $45,000 to $55,000, plus materials and staff resources.

Pre-charrette activity would last for four to six weeks, while the charrette, itself, would last a week, and post-charrette activity another four to six weeks.

The master plan will lead to further smart growth recommendations, such as form-based code, which would involve a complete overhaul of the Unified Development Ordinance and result in what’s generally considered a much more user-friendly document.

“Typically, a master plan ... is best implemented by a form-based code, which has the same type of land use classification systems as the rural-urban transect model to us,” Spear said. “So, they go hand in hand, but you have to do them one step at a time.”

The rural-urban transect model involves the notion that as one moves from the rural interlands into the town center, the type and intensity of development changes. For instance, rural areas would have rural standards, while urban areas would be held to urban standards.

In his memo, Spear said the overall time frame for the creation and adoption of a form-based code is estimated between 18 and 24 months, and it can be completed in-house or contracted outside. Consultants usually charge between $25,000 and $70,000 for a detailed form-based code.

Spear is optimistic the town will be able to coordinate its master planning with that of Appalachian State University.

“It just seems to be excellent timing, as far as the university being in a position where they’re looking to update their campus-wide master plan at the same time the town’s looking to develop a master plan,” he said. “So, it’s just a perfect opportunity for a marriage of those two plans.”

The council is now accepting proposals from design firms vying to direct the charrette, and a small selection committee of council and planning commission members will select the most ideal candidate.

“The whole idea with design charrettes is to load the front-end of the process with as much input as you possibly can and work out all the details before you prepare preliminary plans,” Spear said. “That way, you avoid that kind of vicious loop about plan preparation, public comment, refinement, people getting entrenched in their positions and not wanting to budge.”