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| At the Site of the Old Youth Center. Photo by Tita Berger 25 August 2012 |
Old Youth Center Site/New Public Park Space
Community Design Workshop
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
Sponsored by:
Workshop Agenda
August 24 Friday Evening
6 pm to 8 pm
- Welcome and Introductions
- Community input and discussion on existing conditions and issues
- Community ideas on programming of park space (community needs and users)
August 25 Saturday
9 am to 10:30 am
- Presentation of inspirational ideas on vibrant public spaces, parks, and placemaking.
- Community works in small design groups facilitated by a design team member
- Workign lunch provided with music
- Each design group presents their ideas/concepts
- Community and Design Team formulate a preferred design plan based on the design groups' concepts
The Design Team:
CommunityByDesign: Charlie Deans, NMMS (New Mexico Main Street) Urban Design Associate, 520-444-1267. Paige Winslett, Lanscape Designer/Community Planner
WH Studio: William Powell, NMMS Architectural Design Associate
Milagro Design: Lisa Flynn, Architectural Illustrator
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The above is a fairly exact replica of the agenda for the community design meeting that took place on the last weekend in August. The meeting was not well attended, despite the critical importance of the site as the "heart" of downtown and the Historic Bathhouse District. (For a lengthy reflection on the "heart" of places, see The Death and Life of Ordinary American Towns: Part II) There were about a dozen people present. A dozen is about .001% of the population. The ideas were plentiful and the group lively regardless.
This was my first participant/observant planning experience. I was a little better at the participating than the observation, which I generally try to check, although not always successfully. The more that I thought about the meeting, the more I was taken with a single great idea that was presented there. And the more I reflected in my own will-to-design manic excitement, let's put the pony rides here! and the beer garden there! the more that I considered the process as process, whose end was not a design, but a method that moves the process forward in an efficient way, but also strives to be inclusive and democratic.
Years ago, I asked the very first person that I pitched the idea of a place study on Truth or Consequences what he would identify as the most important aspect of good place making. He said that good communities have good leaders. He had worked in New Mexico communities for thirty years and this was the most important thing he knew about good places. I countered with the idea that everyone brims with this potential. Maybe, he replied, if they have a good leader.
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| The Lee Belle Johnson Senior Recreation Center |
Day One:
The design meeting was held at the Lee Belle Johnson Senior Recreation Center. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Hot Springs Historic Bathhouse District, the Senior Center at 301 Foch Street is a Works Projects of America (WPA) project completed in 1938. The "former Hot Spring Community Center is one of the best examples of the Spanish-Pueblo Revival style in Sierra County (Sec 7, pg. 17). The completion of the project was held up by labor shortages due to the work on the Carrie Tingley Children's Hospital and construction of a new courthouse. "The completion of the project prompted boosters to envision that Hot Springs might emerge as a convention center in the Southwest," the short history adds. It was the Hot Springs Women's Club, who had "advocated...a centrally located public place for residents and visitors alike to read and socialize." This is an intriguing glimpse into history, especially the idea of a place to read.
Day 1 was a few hours on a Friday night. Charlie Deans of New Mexico Main Street (NNMS). NMMS sponsored, organized and facilitated the charrette, along with the local Truth or Consequences Main Street board, headed by the extraordinary Linda DeMarin, and the City of Truth or Consequences. Charlie is a quick thinking, enthusiastic and friendly guy, all good facilitator qualities. City manager Juan Fuentes began with a presentation about the cost of demolition and the remaining monies, which was not too much I gathered from the collective follow up questions. I missed the main presentation, having driven in a little late.
Charlie spent the remainder of the time given a little background, and facilitating a site brainstorming. This began with a site overview. We looked at maps, and Charlie talked about space, connections, visibility and other considerations. He of course mentioned that the heart of downtown was, quite literally, at stake. The thing Charlie discussed at the most length was how people imagined this space could be energized and activated downtown. I have always been a fan of the "art in public places" in New Mexico, and wish a sister organization could be started called "people in public places." He urged his small audience to think about context, from streets to history. He encouraged participants to think about programming--the context-specific and event-specific ways that space will be used. In other words, the the how and why and when people use public spaces.
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| Charlie Deans from NNMS listens intently to the participants. |
Day Two:
Day Two began with a Power Point that Charlie and the design team (see agenda above) had put together after the first round the night before. Granted, the team had a good foundation of experience, but it was still a nice bit of visual and theoretical work on the town and the site.
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| The participants. |
As noted in the agenda, the presentation included 'inspirational ideas on vibrant public spaces, parks, and placemaking.' Charlie had a few examples from Project for Public Spaces (PPS), "a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities." (http://www.pps.org). I am a big fan of this site and the projects it highlights. Place matters noted Charlie, but people matter more. The community is the expert when it comes to places, he added. The goal of the planning meeting was to create a place, not a design, something akin to a living room for the community, a comfortable place where people can sprawl out and feel at home, locals and visitors alike. (The 'sprawl out' comment was my own interpretation). Charlie often referred to the lists that had been writing on flip board paper the night before, and sought additional input on place history and place memory.
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| Friday Brainstorming |
The rest of the day was spend in the design process. Three groups, armed with a map of the site and downtown, a transparency laid over the map, a set of really nice high quality markers (design pens!) and a design team facilitator, were tasked with the job of taking the ideas presented and realizing them in a conceptual design. At this point I should have assumed my observer role, and faithfully journeyed from group to group, noting patterns of behavior and action, capturing elements of how this group of a little more than a dozen was enacting place on a one-dimensional surface. But I was too busy with my own group (all women, all fabulous), designing the ultimate park. And I do mean designing! We had Lisa Flynn, an architectural designer out of Santa Fe who owns Milagro Design, taking our ideas and rendering them beautifully, almost like a fairy-tale illustrator bringing ideas to life on the page.
It was heady stuff, and we jumped right in. It felt, and I have really pondered this, because I have thought through this meeting to very lengthy and uncertain ends, a little like getting someone else's money and getting to spend it. Like Vegas on someone else's buck. This was just me, of course, I really hope this post will elicit at least one comment from another participant. Other groups took some time to list goals, and there were, on the whole, really extraordinary ideas and a tremendous enthusiasm. I will take a minute to post the majority of the photos I took, which were far too few, because they do a good job of capturing some of this energy and spirit. I might have taken more pictures had I not been so engaged with creating the BEST-PLACE-EVER.
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| Participants participating in design. |
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| Rendering ideas in full color. |
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| Design Group hard at work. |
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| Layers of ideas. |
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| Design Group presentation, with design elements. |
Healing Waters Plaza
The best-place-ever feeling got dimmer and dimmer that longer I thought about the meeting, the longer I thought about one particular design, and the more that I processed my own experiences. But on the day in question, I was so delighted with my group (I am not sure how the other groups worked together, I sensed some monopolizing, but as I noted I was so damn busy participating I had very little time to observe), it was hard not to get caught up in the moment.
Early on Day 2, Sazi from the Sierra Grande came by to participate. After listening for a good while, she reminded the group that people came to the Sierra Grande, the best and most elegant of the town's bathhouses, for rejuvenation and relaxation. They came, and put a good deal of money into the local coffers, in order to sooth their spirit and heal their bodies and souls. While the event-driven desires of the groups as a whole (fiestas! events! music ! movies on the back wall! fountains!) were understandable and welcome as evidence of community-building, they did not perhaps reflect what the town really had to offer. We have a park with many of the amenities already in place, she remarked, so why were we striving to create another one, even if it was a newer and better model? What about ideas of conservation and education?
Another of the groups participants had mentioned the conservation work that Ted Turner was doing, and Sazi reminded the group that a great many people who came to the area were deeply interested in the the history of the area as both a 'southwestern/western' place and as a desert place. Why not, she asked, take the park back to the beginning? Create a habitat with some park features for meditation, places to sit and walk, with a lot of places near the Senior Center for educational material and signs. The well (there is a well in the corner of the lot, a very exciting feature) could be used to create a water feature, and the whole place could be showcase for healing and sustainability of self and environment. Sazi had to leave, but designer Lisa Flynn made the ideas come to life with colored pens (see rendering below).
Ultimately, the day ended with a not a great deal of consensus on what should happen with the space in order to make it a place. The presentation of the soft greens and flowing waters of the conservation park had a profound effect. The enthusiasm shifted, as certain elements were celebrated, such as having a stage for events and music, and water features, of course, but there was an element of thoughtfulness that dampened the full-throttle design work of the day. The name of the place, the Healing Water's Plaza, in light of the urban/downtown/river Healing Water's Trial that is the town's newest attraction, was verbally endorsed.
The designers and team leaders, architect Will Powell and urban design associate Charlie, landscape architect and community planer Paige Winslett, with architectural illustrator extraordinaire Lisa Flynn, were tasked with creating a design based on the ebb and flow of ideas of the day. I look forward to seeing the ultimate design that Main Street comes up with and hearing what more community members have to say. I found myself still thinking about the conservation park while I was walking through the Rio Grande Nature Center the Sunday I returned to Albuquerque, and later in the week at the beautiful Old Town Plaza.
What makes a great place? This is a question I have set out to explore in my place study on Truth or Consequences. It is not a question that is easy to answer, or maybe even possible to answer except in part. But it is a question that is worth asking, because our places are our context. They tell us who we are, where we have been, and who we want to become. The are us.
I can imagine taking a book to the Healing Waters Plaza Conservation Plaza, and meeting a friend to walk the Healing Waters trail at this place, and socializing here. And I can imagine the Fiestas happening on the hardscape of the streets and adjacent parking lots, and replanting some of the grasses every year after the Fiestas are over. But I could not have come up with this idea, because my skills and leadership do not turn this way. So maybe it does take all of us, and sometimes with enough of us someone gets it right.
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| The Healing Waters Conservation Plaza comes to life. |
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