MACON’S BEALL’S HILL AREA TO BE SUBJECT OF DESIGN CHARRETTE ON NOVEMBER 1 – NOVEMBER 6, 2001

 Oct. 22, 2001—The revitalization of Macon’s Beall’s Hill area, located in central south Macon, will be the subject of an intensive public design workshop, or charrette, held November 1 through November 6, 2001. The charrette is sponsored by the Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture and the City of Macon, with support from Mercer University. It will take place at Centenary United Methodist Church, 1290 College St., Macon GA 31207.

“We’re thrilled to have this opportunity to work with the City of Macon,” says Charles C. Bohl, Director of the Knight Program. “Beall’s Hill is facing a host of urban revitalization challenges, and we hope to find every way possible to assist local leaders and citizens to make the Beall’s Hill revitalization a success.”

The Knight Program in Community Building and the University of Miami School of Architecture have crucial roles to play in this ambitious project. The City of Macon, Mercer University, and other local partners have made a concerted effort during the past few years in commissioning background studies, analyses, and grant applications to help guide this long-term redevelopment effort. Through the charrette, the Knight Program will learn more about Beall’s Hill, actively solicit the community’s input, and after gathering as much information as possible will begin to flesh out specific urban design strategies for housing, streets, commercial areas, public parks, and plazas for Beall’s Hill.

Rather than providing one grand vision for the neighborhood, the charrette will focus on a series of projects and urban design guidelines that can be implemented through a steady, incremental process of revitalization supported by public and private partnerships. As the ideas generated during the charrette are implemented, Beall’s Hill will emerge once again as a great urban neighborhood and a model for the redevelopment of other inner-city neighborhoods. “Every place is unique, but there are neighborhoods facing the same types of challenges as Beall’s Hill in cities and towns throughout the United States,” Bohl notes. “One of our goals is to create a model that other communities can follow.”

About Beall’s Hill

Beall's Hill is an historic gateway neighborhood to downtown Macon, strategically located between Mercer University and the Medical Center of Central Georgia. It possesses a valuable architectural heritage, but its revitalization poses significant design and planning challenges. A great deal of housing has been lost to demolition and fires. Obsolete public housing is sited on a "superblock" at the heart of the neighborhood. The neighborhood lacks attractive and welcoming green space and recreational facilities as well as retail and commercial services. Major institutional uses have encroached on formerly residential areas and threaten to wall off the neighborhood from downtown. A railroad and poorly designed bridges isolate the neighborhood from Tattnall Square Park and Alexander II Math-Science Magnet School. However, Beall’s Hill has the potential to be an attractive, diverse, convenient, mixed-use urban neighborhood surrounded by unique amenities: a major university, a regional medical center, a superb neighborhood elementary school, a handsome park and tennis center, revitalized historic neighborhoods, and a downtown filled with restaurants, nightclubs, museums, and performance facilities.

Beall's Hill will be the third and final neighborhood surrounding Tattnall Square Park to be revitalized since 1996 when the Macon Heritage Foundation began restoration of Huguenin Heights and, more recently, Tattnall Square Heights. Over the past two years, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has committed over $2.1 million toward the success of this comprehensive revitalization strategy in Macon, including awards to the Macon Heritage Foundation ($200,000), Goodwill Industries ($400,000), and Mercer University ($1,545,000).

About Charrettes

A charrette is a community-wide design process in which members of the public are invited to meet with designers and planners and encouraged to share their opinions – it is essentially a combination of an urban design studio and a town meeting. The goal is to create a plan that is practical and achieves consensus.

During the charrette, the design team and charrette facilitators meet with members of the public through a series of meetings, receptions, and lectures. During the Beall’s Hill charrette, there will be several meetings held over a period of three days with local neighborhood groups, property owners, developers, church groups and others. After information is collected, the design team synthesizes ideas and creates visuals to explain the evolving plans. Members of the public are invited to observe the design process. Midway through the process, on the evening of November 3, charrette organizers present a "pin-up" review of work in progress to the public for feedback. At the close of the charrette, the completed designs are presented in an open public forum. The designers and planners then spend the next few months finishing documents and design plans.

Beall’s Hill Charrette Leaders

The Beall’s Hill charrette is sponsored in part by the Knight Program in Community Building. The charrette will be led by this year’s Knight Fellows – twelve community development professionals from a variety of disciplines who have received fellowships from the Knight Program for the purpose of advancing the knowledge and practice of creating livable communities. The Knight Fellows bring a range of expertise to the Beall’s Hill charrette, including community development, planning, real estate finance, smart growth policymaking, transportation, architecture, and journalism. The Knight Fellows will be joined by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Dean of the University of Miami’s School of Architecture, along with selected faculty and graduate students. The School of Architecture is a nationally recognized center for the teaching and practice of smart growth, livable communities and New Urbanism. This will be the first in a series of annual charrettes to be conducted by the Knight Program in Community Building, which is funded by a grant from the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation. The local sponsors of the charrette are the Economic and Community Development Department of the City of Macon (Chester Wheeler, Director) and the Macon-Bibb County Planning and Zoning Commission (Vernon Ryle, Director). Dr. Peter Brown, 2001 Knight Fellow and Director of the Mercer Center for Community Development at Mercer University, will serve as the local liaison for the charrette.

New Urbanism

Under the leadership of Dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the University of Miami’s School of Architecture is one of the leading proponents of New Urbanism in the world. New Urbanism is an increasingly important reform movement that seeks to recover urban neighborhoods as mixed-income, mixed-use communities distinguished by appropriate densities and scales, respect for local architectural tradition, and the use of public space to create a coherent neighborhood identity. Great urban neighborhoods are walkable, diverse, and economically sustainable, with shopping, civic institutions, parks, and jobs within easy access of residents. They maximize the use of existing infrastructure and minimize reliance on the automobile. New Urbanism is in the forefront of the "smart growth" fight against sprawl and is the model adopted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the revitalization of public housing neighborhoods through the HOPE VI program. The website for the Congress for the New Urbanism is www.cnu.org.

Beall’s Hill Charrette website at www.BeallsHill.net

In addition to the public meetings, the Beall’s Hill charrette will also be accessible to the public at large through its comprehensive website (www.BeallsHill.net), which will post updates throughout the charrette. Anyone can visit the site and follow the progress of the event. The website is also be a source of general educational information on charrettes, New Urbanism, and other issues significant to the Beall’s Hill revitalization effort. Images of Beall’s Hill and the design team’s work are available on the website.