RUDAT ideas get generally enthusiastic reception
by Dave Pasley, Staff Writer, The Boerne Star

June 13, 2008

RUDAT ideas get generally enthusiastic reception by Dave Pasley - Staff Writer

A Regional-Urban Design Assistance Team (RUDAT) of architects and planners from across the country descended on Boerne for five days spanning last weekend to study the community, listen to the concerns of residents and make recommendations for future development in key areas of the city.

Monday night those recommendations, many of them provocative and far-reaching, were delivered to a crowd of some 300 onlookers gathered in the Boerne Middle School North auditorium.

As with any planning effort, especially one so bold, it remains to be seen if the plan's concepts will gain traction. Calls for things like public art and stringent building codes, proposed by people from places like Berkeley, Calif., could be difficult concepts to sell in a conservative Texas Hill Country community.

"It's hard to live up to the hype," RUDAT Team Leader and Arizona architect James Abell candidly told the crowd Monday.

Boerne City Planner Paul Barwick said he is acutely aware that the toughest sledding lies ahead. Barwick said a RUDAT committee will follow up in the next few weeks with an implementation matrix and said he plans to start work immediately with the RUDAT oversight committee, headed by Paula Hayward and Ben Adam, to put together a sub-committee that will focus on implementing the RUDAT recommendations.

"We need to strike while the iron is hot," Barwick said.

Notably, there was a spontaneous, standing ovation from the crowd Monday night when Hayward thanked Barwick for his efforts to bring the RUDAT to Boerne. The AIA has been sponsoring RUDATs for 30 years and the Boerne RUDAT is only the eighth one to be conducted in a Texas. Barwick is widely credited for that.

The crowd Monday included many members of the city council and planning and zoning commission, as well as business community stalwarts such as Economic Development Corporation President Dan Rogers and Chamber of Commerce President Paula White.

But the planning-friendly crowd was also bulked up with several non-residents with close ties to the AIA, including several UTSA architecture students and former Express-News columnist and architecture critic Mike Greenberg.

In some respects, at least on a macro level, the recommendations for development of the so-called "three C's," the newly-purchased, 15-acre civic campus on North Main St. across from St. Helena's Episcopal Church, the Cibolo Creek and the central business district, were predictable.

The RUDAT team hewed closely to the concepts of new urbanism and green building design that the AIA has long championed. In turn those concepts of city planning and design are deeply embedded in the recommendations of a 92-page report that was summarized Monday night in presentations by RUDAT team members Joel Mills, a project manager from AIA's Washington, D.C. office; Albuquerque architect and landscape architect Karen Pitman; University of California-Berkley housing specialist Larry Rosenthal; Little Rock Historic Preservation official Brian Driscoll; Salt Lake City urban designer and artist Bob Hermann, and; Prescott Gaylord, a principal in a Baltimore firm that specializes in green building construction.

The report is available on the city's Web site at www.ci.boerne.tx.us or at rudatboerne.com. Barwick said he hopes to have hard copies available at city hall and other locations around town for sale soon at a nominal cost.

Gaylord delivered what may be the group's most provocative and costly recommendations - mandatory regenerative design standards that, he said, underpin all of the other recommendations of the RUDAT.

"Every new development must decrease the net effect from impermeable surfaces," Gaylord said. "Every new building must use water harvested on site."

The written report also suggests providing tax incentives to encourage property owners to retrofit existing structures with rainwater catchment devices.

Gaylord recommended the city revise its building codes to require all new homes to be 50 percent more energy efficient than an equivalent house built to existing code standards and that all new commercial buildings be 25 percent more efficient than existing codes.

Gaylord did not provide any details or estimates of the cost impact of his recommendations for regenerative design mandates.

However, if the city were to act on his recommendations and apply the standards to projects like the new library, the up-front costs could be budget-busters. In fact, the city council and city staff are currently in the midst of trying to find a way to include green building features in a new public safety building on Old San Antonio Road while also staying within the budget confines for the project that voters approved in a bond issue last year.

Gaylord also suggested a major change in the way the city designs and constructs its roadways and sidewalks. If those changes are approved and incorporated into the city's recently revised subdivision regulations, all new developments would be required to meet the new standards.

The report states: "All new walking and street infrastructure improvements should be regenerative - and be required to incorporate green storm water management measures. This can be achieved through storm water treatment and recharge planters, bio-swales and rain gardens. Every linear foot of new driving and walking space should be

required to contain water slowing and pollution treatment."

Hermann, the Salt Lake City urban designer and artist, was tasked to make suggestions for the proposed civic campus on North Main Street, and he had plenty of them, including:

* Extend Johns Road and Saunders Street into the property and placing a traffic circle at their intersection, possibly with a solar tower or other dramatic feature inside the circle.

* Make the campus a fun place to go and include an artist in the design team.

* Align the buildings for maximum solar exposure and create a natural treatment center for storm water runoff.

* Design the buildings to last at least 200 years.

* Connect the campus with a hike and bike trail system that would tie into the Old No. 9 trail and a future trail system along Cibolo Creek.

Hermann said the campus could serve as a transition area between the central business district and areas further north on Main Street.

Rosenthal delivered his recommendations for the central business district in a series of rhymes, including "Downtown heaven, tame that 87" and "Poop on the third loop, stall the sprawl." The first phrase is a reference to concerns about the growing volume of traffic on Main Street (U.S. Highway 87 business) and the second refers to a controversial proposal for a loop road that would divert traffic from State Highway 46 around downtown.

Rosenthal said he thinks the Main Street bridge over Cibolo Creek should be a magnet for development and he suggested adding an extensive deck to the west side of the bridge that would encourage pedestrian movement across the creek while also providing a place for people to gather and recreate.

Abell urged citizens to consider the I-10 corridor from a regional perspective that might be enhanced by signage control, strong landscape development ordinances, large public art displays and themed screening walls.

"Could this stretch of only four miles of a coast-to-coast highway become the most distinctive, the best landscaped, and the most regionally expressive stretch of highway in the southwestern United States?" Rosenthal asked Monday night.

Ironically, the next day, Tuesday night, the city council unanimously approved on first reading an ordinance that would revise existing sign regulations to nearly double the allowed height of signs on properties fronting the interstate.

Pitman, the Albuquerque architect, said she thought Boerne was "one of the most walkable cities I've ever been in," but she said design guidelines still need to be developed to improve connectivity. She also recommended a complete overhaul of the city's parks and recreation plan and said she favored the development of a loop road to lessen traffic congestion on Main Street downtown.

In the area of historic preservation, the RUDAT report recommends tax credits for historic properties, developing a historic preservation master plan and developing design guidelines for historic districts.

An extensive section of the RUDAT report is devoted to "civic health" that deals with issues pertaining to public interaction.

Mills, the AIA project manager from Washington D.C., addressed the lingering animosity of the Esperanza debate and took a not-so-subtle dig at the warring factions in the community that are symbolized by the groups Boerne Together and Boerne Forward.

Mills suggested what the city needs instead of open conflict is a collaborative effort to move Boerne "forward together."

"The opportunity to have community-wide processes that are both highly participative and express a more intentional search for common ground on community issues outside of the formal decision-making processes is essential to continued quality discourse," the report states.

Barwick said he thought the RUDAT came at a good time, on the heels of Esperanza and the controversial selection of a new site for a wastewater treatment plant.

"It gave people a chance to vent," Barwick said.

All of the RUDAT members made a point to praise the sense of community they found in Boerne, but Mills noted that this sense of community does not seem to extend to the neighborhood level, and he recommended the city work to establish stronger neighborhood identities.

Mills recommended that it would be important for Boerne to reach out to new residents moving in to the Esperanza development so that they feel a part of the larger community as soon as they move in. Otherwise, he warned, the mindset will be "us and them."

Mills suggested reinstituting the practice of extending a formal welcome to all new residents.