FIRST KNIGHT PROGRAM IN COMMUNITY BUILDING DESIGN CHARRETTE HELD IN MACON’S BEALL’S HILL NEIGHBORHOOD FOCUSED ON REVITALIZATION, CONCLUDED WITH 60 DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS

Dec. 7, 2001—From November 1 – November 6, 2001, the revitalization of the Beall’s Hill neighborhood in Macon, GA was the subject of an intensive public design workshop, or charrette. The charrette was 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. As a result of the charrette, several members of the charrette team were invited to continue to advise the City of Macon on planning issues.

At the charrette’s public presentation on November 5, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture, led a discussion in which 60 specific design recommendations were presented to the public. Although the recommendations covered a broad range of issues from the redesign of a major roadway to the renovation of bridges to re-landscaping a park, the core theme of the charrette’s proposals was a call for the infill and rehabilitation of houses that respect and reflect the neighborhood’s historic character.

“The charrette was a stunning and insightful look at our community,” said Peter Brown, director of the Mercer Center for Community Development at Macon’s Mercer University and a 2001 fellow with the Knight Program.

At the presentation, Macon’s mayor, C. Jack Ellis, noted, “It’s up to us now to implement this great plan, this great vision.”

The charrette began on November 1 with several days of information gathering, during which charrette team members met with community stakeholders for a series of 15 public meetings to solicit community opinion on the 54-acre Beall’s Hill neighborhood. More than 750 local participants showed up for the meetings and for the charrette’s final presentation.

The charrette team was a diverse mix of people that included the 2001 Knight Fellows in Community Building, a group of 12 mid-career professionals from a variety of community development fields. The design group for the charrette was led by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Knight Fellow Dhiru Thadani, and Jaime Correa, director of the School of Architecture’s graduate program in Suburb and Town Design. The designers were 12 graduate students in the University of Miami School of Architecture’s Suburb and Town Design Program, who were joined by 3 University of Georgia, Athens students in Landscape Architecture and School of Environmental Design.

The charrette follow-up includes the immediate challenge of consolidating recommendations for several separate planning efforts conducted in Macon during the past year by different firms: the EDAW Master Plan, the Robert Charles Lesser Residential and Commercial Market Studies, the Urban Collage Development Plan, the Hope VI Proposal, the Trinity/Brookwood analysis, and the Knight Program charrette.

The different efforts are being consolidated for presentation to Macon’s City Council in March 2002, which will be followed by a presentation to the County Planning and Zoning Board. The charrette benefited from and built on the prior studies, and as a result, the charrette material will form the backbone of the consolidated plan. “The charrette was very helpful,” said Dwan Packnett, a lawyer with Trinity Plus One Consultants, Inc. of Stone Mountain, GA, who is coordinating the consolidation efforts. “The work was excellent and the charrette filled in a lot of the gaps from the more general plans. You can’t do a successful implementation without having the gaps filled in.”

Beall’s Hill

Beall’s Hill is an area facing a host of urban revitalization challenges. “Our aim was to assist the community of Macon test a new model for a charrette with a more robust community participation process, and to propose solutions and strategies that may also be relevant for other communities with similar concerns,” said Charles C. Bohl, director of the Knight Program. “The Knight Fellows brought a wide range of expertise and a diversity of views to the table, which resulted in a comprehensive and insightful analysis of Beall’s Hill.”

The work for the charrette began months in advance, when several of the Knight Fellows made a series of visits to the community, met with representatives, studied the contents of previous reports by planners, and prepared detailed drawings of neighborhoods and housing types.

Beall’s Hill is a 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 challengers. Beall’s Hill has the potential to be an attractive, diverse, convenient mixed-use urban neighborhood surrounded by many amenities: a major university, a regional medical center, a superb neighborhood elementary school, a park and tennis center, revitalized historic neighborhoods, and a downtown that offers restaurants, nightclubs, museums, and performance facilities.

A variety of foundations and institutions have supported revitalization projects in the areas near Beall’s Hill during the past five years. Among the partners in the efforts are: the City of Macon; Mercer University’s Mercer Center for Community Development, Macon-Bibb County Land Bank Authority, Macon Housing Authority, Core Neighborhood Revitalization, Inc., Macon Heritage Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, Central South Task Force and Willing Workers Association of Central South, and Renaissance Housing Partnership. 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 more than $2.1 million toward the success of this comprehensive revitalization strategy in Macon, including awards to the Macon Heritage Foundation ($2000,000), Goodwill Industries ($400,000), and Mercer University ($1,545,000).

The Knight Program in Community Building

The Knight Program in Community Building is an interdisciplinary program based at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture. Each year the program hosts a charrette in one of the Knight cities. Beall’s Hill was the first neighborhood to be the subject of a Knight Program charrette.

The Knight Program addresses today’s urgent issues associated with community building, including the complex problems of suburban sprawl and inner-city disinvestments. The program’s goal is to advance the knowledge, and practice of New Urbanism and Smart Growth through an innovative series of initiatives, including fellowships, scholarships, conferences, and publications. Fellowships are awarded to a diverse group of mid-career professionals with an active interest in the interdisciplinary process of community building, including architects, planners, scholars, community leaders, policymakers, journalists, and theorists. The program seeks to educate these influential practitioners in the principles of New Urbanism and Smart Growth in the belief that confronting the roadblocks to community building requires the shared vision and commitment of a wide range of people and professions. The Knight Program builds on the strength of the University of Miami’s School of Architecture as an international leader in the planning and design of livable communities.

Publications

A series of publications are offered in conjunction with the Beall’s Hill charrette:

www.BeallsHill.net: a website that documented the charrette, continues to post updates as developments occur, and is a valuable resource for general educational information on charrettes, New Urbanism, and other issues significant to the Beall’s Hill revitalization effort. Publication date: Ongoing.
Pre-charrette paper: this newspaper contains a series of articles on Beall’s Hill and on community building. It was distributed by The Macon Telegraph. Publication date: October 2001.
Beall’s Hill brochure: a brochure that contains the master plan and design highlights presented by the charrette. The brochure will be widely distributed. Publication date: February 2002.
Post-charrette paper: this newspaper contains the strategic actions recommended by the charrette team, includes a copy of the master plan, and has several articles about revitalization. It will be distributed by The Macon Telegraph. Publication date: March 2002.
Comprehensive report: a formal report with documentation, geared to government and community organizations. Publication date: April 2002.