New York Times, NY, Wednesday, October 19, 2005
By Robin Pogrebin
Architects and urban planners have been known to pull all-nighters wrapping up big presentations. But the group of 200 who emerged bleary-eyed on Monday in Biloxi, Miss., had struggled with an unusually daunting task: rebuilding the state's entire coastline.
What they came up with over six days for the 11 towns in their mandate ranged from gentle restoration plans to extremely aggressive reconstruction proposals.
In general, the effort amounted to "a retrofitting of suburbia," said Andrés Duany, the forum's leader, to "create a neighborhood structure." Most participants embrace an urban design movement that advocates walkable streets and a denser mix of houses and stores rather than urban sprawl.
Casino owners and developers - who had been excluded from the forum - were briefed on the results yesterday.
Next, Jim Barksdale, the former Netscape chief executive who is the chairman of the forum, is to present their plans to the officials of the towns, which, to limit the scope, were not included in the forum's project, part of Gov. Haley Barbour's larger renewal effort. To incorporate public opinion on the rebuilding plans, four town hall meetings along the coast are scheduled over the next week. At year's end, Mr. Barksdale is to present his recommendations to the governor.
The Biloxi team's proposal was the most comprehensive, Mr. Duany said, yielding highly detailed plans for significant parts of the city - the waterfront, historic core, casinos and low-income neighborhoods. These included constructing a mixed-use fishing village in a waterfront area now used by Vietnamese shrimpers and turning coastal Highway 90 into a glamorous strip with casinos on either side.
"A lot of people feel the Mississippi Gulf Coast could be as beautiful and amenable as the Florida Panhandle," said Elizabeth Moule, a Pasadena, Calif., architect who was a member of the Biloxi group.
With the Federal Emergency Management Agency proposing first-floor heights of up to 25 feet in some cases, the team argued that elevated houses were unattractive and costly. Instead, the planners proposed both "submersible houses" built to withstand floodwaters that could be located at ground level and also new neighborhoods north of the city on higher ground.
The Gulfport team proposed moving the railway to free up the industrial port area, where only about one-fifth of the harbor is used for trade - in bananas, mahogany and other cargo. Responding to Mayor Brent Warr's interest in creating a premier Riviera-style hotel and casino in the harbor, the San Antonio architect Michael Imber drafted plans for a hotel in the style of early-20th-century grand hotels in Europe and the United States.
While the overall mood at the conclusion of the forum - at the Isle of Capri casino hotel in Biloxi - was upbeat, some architects expressed frustration that clear guidelines for rebuilding were not yet available from FEMA. During the forum, the architects had only advisory maps of so-called high-velocity zones to work from. "We spent a lot of time trying to understand the new FEMA rules," Mr. Duany said. "That has not been a satisfying experience."
He described the rules as ambiguous, complicated and tentative. "We still don't really know what can be built or not," he said. "It is frustrating. They need to be technically precise and quickly because people are anxious to get going and it's hard to tell what to do.
"They say the rules will not be ready for 18 months," he added. "That's half of World War II. Forget it - you can't wait that long."
Todd Davison, an official in FEMA's regional office in Atlanta said his office had made a good-faith effort on short notice to convert information about how high buildings need to be into maps for the forum participants. "We didn't know there was this urgent need to produce these things," he said. "They said, 'Can you pull a rabbit out of your hat?' We did the best we could." Official new maps are not due to be published for 12 to 24 months, Mr. Davison said.
In Ocean Springs, the group working there recommended connecting Highway 90 to a rail transit station reached via a pedestrian-friendly street with views of the existing harbor and working waterfront.
The Bay St. Louis group suggested enhancing the downtown and beachfront areas with new civic spaces and amenities. The Old Town area, for example, could devote space to public events, markets and studios for artists, the team said. Damaged buildings like St. Stanislaus College should be rebuilt "in a compatible, well-researched local architectural character," the team's report said.
The planners also proposed rebuilding piers and peninsulas in Bay St. Louis as neighborhood focal points, creating dispersed or hidden areas for parking, using low-lying unoccupied land as green space and rebuilding existing historic beachfront houses in a more hurricane-resistant form, with additional homes behind them.
To revive the historic character of Moss Point, forum participants recommended reworking the downtown street network, introducing two- and three-story buildings, including restaurants and retail shops, and building a ferry or kayak landing in the Kreole neighborhood.
To replace the important buildings destroyed in Pass Christian, planners suggested a new elevated City Hall, with an elegant arcaded space on the ground level that could hold a farmers' market, festivals or start-up businesses. A London designer, Ben Pentreath, drew two versions of a replacement Wal-Mart for Pass Christian - one that would recreate the damaged store but integrate second-floor condos, and another that could anchor a new streetscape downtown.
As the architects and planners returned home to their various offices all over the world - about half the participants were from the area - the nagging question was whether any of these proposals would ever be realized.
"There has to be an organization in place that moves this forward," Mr. Duany said.
