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Windsor selected for 'sustainable' assessment

AIA PROGRAM HELPS CITIES DEVELOP PLANS FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

WINDSOR – The Town Green Village project put Windsor on the map for "smart" land-use planning, and now the town is one of a select few cities to have a team of experts from around the nation help it craft a roadmap for environmentally friendly construction over coming decades.

The town of Windsor has been selected by the American Institute of Architects' Center for Communities by Design to have a Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) visit the town and help public and private stakeholders create a vision and framework for sustainable development and redevelopment along Old Redwood Highway, which forms a four-mile north-south backbone for the other main roads in the town.

“Some of it can be painful and some can be productive,” said town Building and Planning Director Peter Chamberlin of the report the team would prepare. “We’re interested in a big-picture hard look at the corridor.”

Some sustainability issues the town is wrestling with include energy and water resources, the latter of which will be essential as the town population is projected to grow from about 26,000 now to nearly 33,000 in 2035 and the ability to tap the Russian River becomes limited, according to Mr. Chamberlin.

The town is one of 10 cities these volunteer teams can assess this year. Windsor had missed the Nov. 16 deadline for applications when Mitch Conner, chairman of the town planning commission and principal of architecture and urban planning firm Archilogix of Santa Rosa, presented the idea to the Town Council late last year.

However, only nine cities had been selected so far, including Detroit; New Orleans; Kauai, Hawaii; and Tampa, Fla. Preliminary visits are set to start this spring, and an advance team could be in Windsor as early as this summer.

First, the American Institute of Architects will enter a memorandum of understanding with the town's 21-member assessment steering committee and the Redwood Empire chapter of the institute on responsibilities, according to Mr. Conner, vice-chairman of the committee and director of government relations for the chapter. Then the timeframe for the assessment will be scheduled.

The Washington-based institute’s board of directors invited the town to apply after a visit from Mayor Debra Fudge, Mr. Chamberlin and Mr. Conner, who were attending a smart-growth conference there. They presented strides the town has made in the past several years toward sustainability, such as the nationally recognized Town Green Village ongoing downtown redevelopment project, a new mandatory green-building program for commercial and mixed-use projects, a LEED-accredited building inspector and land-use vision plans for north and south sections of Old Redwood Highway as well as Shiloh Road.

The town submitted its application Feb. 21 along with several letters of support from those with proposed projects or businesses along the corridor.

If Windsor hadn't been selected for an assessment visit this year, it would have vied for one next year, according to Mr. Chamberlin. He envisions such input will be helpful in town planning for the next 20 to 100 years.

“The [Town] Council believes SDAT is an important adjunct to the type of planning we are doing here,” he said.

Specifically, the town wants help with a strategy to keep development within the town footprint, which includes its sphere of influence north and south of current town limits, according to the 14-page assessment application.

Also, the town wants to emphasize use of public transit rather than automobiles and make it easier for residents to walk and bicycle to local shops and from the east side of Highway 101 to the west side, where the historic downtown and Town Green hub of community events are located.

An SDAT report will help the town as it is updating the circulation element of the General Plan, according to the town's application.

The Center for Communities by Design launched the assessment program in 2005 as a broad-based approach to sustainable design, rather than the detail-oriented approach of the group's 41-year-old Rural/Urban Design Assistance Team program. Teams from that program visited Healdsburg in 1982 and Santa Rosa in 1998.

Mr. Conner, who participated in the Santa Rosa assessment, said the lesson from the previous urban design efforts in Sonoma County was that change takes time.

Healdsburg's overhaul of its plaza area in just the past several years has made the city a wine tourism hub for the northern part of the county. Santa Rosa has been striving toward implementing suggestions, called CityVision, such as a transit-oriented development in Railroad Square, higher density in the downtown core and a reunified Courthouse Square.

The sustainable design process includes a team of outside architects, urban designers, hydrologists, attorneys, economists and other professionals. The members visit a city for three days to identify strengths, weaknesses and obstacles to change regarding sustainability; make a report; and follow up on progress six months later.

Different from the urban design program, the institute offers $15,000 toward the cost of each city studied. Windsor has pledged $15,000 from its General Fund and Redevelopment Agency to cover the cost. Santa Rosa's regional design visit cost $40,000.

Orrin Thiessen, managing partner of Town Green Village and a member of the steering committee for the sustainable design effort, welcomes input that would lead to cohesive design along the corridor and planning for which areas will remain rural, undeveloped, residential and commercial. Such planning, minus a strong focus on sustainability, went into the area vision plans, such as the south corridor one where Mr. Thiessen is building a mixed-use project called The Oaks at Windsor Village.

“It’s good that we’re preplanning this stuff, so when development does come, developers know what to do,” he said.

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