Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
KELLY VIRELLAClearwater's principles for its downtown revitalization aim to attract people who stroll the sidewalks, sip coffee in courtyards and chat in plazas.
CLEARWATER - Before Starbucks opened on Cleveland Street at S Fort Harrison Avenue, the intersection was just a plain set of crosswalks.
People walked by on their way to lunch at Cajun Grill Express, the buffet at 421 Cleveland St., barely stopping to notice the 77-year-old Wiseman Building.
Then the coffee shop added a patio to the building and installed an arcade of windows along its facade.
"The corner came alive," said Gina Clayton, Clearwater's long-range planning manager. "Pedestrians are drawn to it because people are sitting on the patio people-watching. You can look inside the store and see people."
Lively is what Clearwater's planning department and commissioners would like to see the rest of downtown become. And, those officials say, one way to achieve that is through close attention to the design of buildings and streets.
The planning department, in conjunction with a committee of residents, will soon begin formulating a list of the features that they believe downtown streets and buildings must have to draw people. On Thursday, the City Commission approved a set of 20 or so principles from which the features will be derived.
The principles offer a preview of the city's design priorities. For example:
New buildings should be "compatible" with surrounding structures in terms of height, width and depth.
Blocks in the downtown core should be small.
Parking lots and garages should be unobtrusive.
Courtyards, plazas and other public spaces are encouraged.
The final list of features will be called design guidelines. They won't require the remodeling of existing buildings, but will apply to all new construction.
"You have to make it an interesting place to walk," said Cyndi Tarapani, the city's planning director. "You have to give people a reason to want to be there."
Clayton declined last week to give examples of buildings whose designs drive people away. "Our philosophy is that we don't put any property owners on the spot," she said. "If we have a development proposal in front of us and it isn't working out, we deal with it then."
The look and feel of a building or street is crucial to the success of downtown revitalization projects, said Trent Green, an associate professor of architecture and urban design at the University of South Florida.
People complain that downtown Tampa and other cities are dead, as if it were an accident, he said. "Guess what?" he said. "It's designed that way."
Before pedestrians will use a particular street, the windows and doors of the buildings on it must open to the street, Green said. Dead streets are often lined with buildings that turn their backs to pedestrians.
"We can design a building in such a way that it repels life," he said. "If you walk along a full city block and there are no windows and no way to go into a building, generally people will avoid that street."
Parking lots located in front of buildings isolate pedestrians on sidewalks from the people inside of the building, he said. Courtyards and plazas unite pedestrians.
The height, width, and depth of buildings also affect pedestrian's affinity for a particular neighborhood, he said. The proportions of the buildings in a neighborhood establish its identity, or character, he said.
"The first thing you encounter is the character of a place," he said. "Either you like it and it makes you want to come back or you don't."
Green and other experts tout Orlando as an example of a Florida city that has leveraged design guidelines to stimulate downtown growth.
For years the north side of the city's downtown was a sea of parking lots, said Kristin Larsen, associate professor in the University of Florida's department of urban and regional planning.
Adopting design guidelines brought people and housing back downtown, Larsen said. "They had a very strong vision of what they wanted their city to look like and they stuck to it," she said.
Yet, their guidelines were flexible enough to accommodate reasonable variation, she said. "I have seen guidelines that get down to architectural details on buildings, that require a porch that is 5 feet deep and 20 feet wide" she said.
"There should be certain unifying elements, but to overdo it so that you hamstring people makes all buildings look the same."
Flexibility also keeps costs low, said Robert Stroh, director of the Shimberg Center for Affordable Housing, a University of Florida research center. "A tile roof or a certain selection of exterior materials may really contribute to the design of a building," he said. "But on the other hand, the developer might not be able to control the cost."
With the help of Clearwater's planning department, a committee of 15 residents will steer the development of the city's design guidelines. Keeping them flexible is one of their primary objectives, Clayton said.
"We've got a good process in place with the steering committee," she said. "We've got a good cross section of people from architects to contractors to residents."
The committee's schedule of meetings and its agenda will be posted on the city's Web site, www.myclearwater.com Clayton said. Every draft that the committee produces also will appear on the city's Web site, Clayton said.
People living in the affected areas will get letters about the new guidelines, she said.
Clearwater developers Ben Harrill and Jerry Figurski said they have faith that the city will adopt reasonable guidelines.
But the men, whose proposal to build 150-foot-tall condo towers near the Old Bay neighborhood was rejected earlier this year, questioned whether the planners who review development projects will also be reasonable.
"The devil is in the details," Harrill said.
"The devil will lie in the hands of people who review proposals," Figurski said.