Dick Charles, Fairhope’s Lord High Commissioner of Planning has a really nifty plan for the city: The Comprehensive Plan of 2000. For about six years it has (purportedly) been the guiding document for Fairhope’s development and is now in the process of being updated. In fact, as this issue of Lagniappe hits the stands, the formal review of the Draft Update #2 is taking place. Exciting, what?
Not so, you say? You didn’t even know that there was Comprehensive Plan, much less an update? Being the civic-minded citizen you are, how could this be true? Don’t you recall the Fairhope City Council meeting where Cecil Christenberry dramatically described the approval of the Wal-Mart project as the death-knell of the “Village Plan?”
That very plan is the core and essence of the Comprehensive Plan of 2000. You know – the plan that required building all of those pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use clusters of retail and residences in park-like settings, scattered around the city. Recall it now? No – well don’t feel bad. Nobody else can recall it either, ‘cause that never happened here.
Professional planners (not just the urban type) like to start off planning sessions with words attributed to Field Marshall von Moltke (of WWI fame): “Planning is everything. Plans are nothing.” He could have been describing Fairhope’s situation – a Comprehensive Plan that is essentially empty, without force, a nothing.
Now look at this plan – the guide-star (at least in concept) in the 21st Century for Lord Richard and his fellow planners. It’s an elegant document and while the work of many, it still bears this unmistakable imprint of urban planning professionals: lots of intricate graphics and loads of bafflegab type jargon.
The pros are Gould Evans Goodman Associates, LLC of Kansas City. Back in 1999 these folks looked into the future, across the centuries and reported out with a plan for Fairhope. In it, after quickly dismissing market-driven development, they arrived at a planner-driven development concept (Surprise!) – called “Village Centers.” Village Centers are the meat and potatoes of urban planners. They are a concept that is not so old as to seem stale, but not so innovative as to seem risky
The city would have a Regional Village Center (AKA: Downtown Fairhope), a Community Village Center (the Greeno Road/US 98 strip) and six Neighborhood Village Centers (Locations: TBA, but no closer than 1-1/2 miles from any other village center – so says the plan). Everybody would use the first two centers, but the remaining six would be designed for local pedestrian or bicycle access to the goods and services integral to that specific community.
Fairhope was founded as a utopian, Single Tax Colony and this “Village” scheme seems to follow that historical precedent. However unlike the Colony, the Village Concept is absent any evidence of success after six years. Residential subdivisions continue to be built and commercial development continues to grow independently along the main roads. Nobody is building the commercial component of these Neighborhood Villages, because for most businesses, there is not enough demand in these dispersed locations to survive.
The exceptions to this economic limitation are those businesses that already use multiple locations and proximity to customers as key elements of their business models. Typical of this category are service stations, convenience stores, fast food restaurants (sometimes all three in one) and banks. Except for the last, most residential neighborhoods would not want these kind of businesses co-located with them.
This bodes poorly for the Neighborhood Villages, at least until the population grows enough to support multiple locations for commonly used businesses. Even then, close proximity of most types of businesses to residences might not be as popular as Gould Evens etc. would hope.
Even where the Village Center concept has succeeded, it has not functioned in the way that the Comprehensive Plan envisions. Planned communities like Irvine and Westlake Village, both in Southern California, incorporate elements of the Village Center concept. They have been around for quite a while and they turned out really nice – lots of parks – and parking lots. In the final analysis, they are not as bike- and pedestrian-oriented as the planners planned.
Why? It’s pretty obvious. Just think about bringing home a week’s worth of groceries on foot, in 90 degree weather. Then add picking up the dry cleaning on the way and getting kids to soccer practice and dance lessons (oops, no dance studio in our center, gotta go to Village Center #3 and the soccer field is at the Rec Center). Guess what – they are just as car-oriented as a traditional suburb, but the drive is ever so much more attractive (and property values reflect this attractiveness too).
And here we have a big difference between these successful villages and the villages in the Fairhope Comprehensive Plan. The successful ones were built by private developers. Their decision to build a village and not just a subdivision was based on favorable economic analyses of that kind of community structure. It’s working because it is intrinsically viable, not because it was directed by a governmental body.
As the draft Comprehensive Plan undergoes its 2006 Update, the focus needs to be on aligning it with what can be done to make Fairhope’s future an attractive and appealing one. Don’t keep holding on to a future created with a standard template by a bunch of planners with no responsibility for implementation. Take advantage of the update to replace it with a vision for the future that fits Fairhope and then do the planning to get there.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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