Well Done Jackson, WY

Traverse City had the "Your Bay, Your Say" sessions in 2005 and we're still waiting for implementation of a bayfront park.

The Teton Boulder Park was conceived in 2009 and opened before the end of 2010.



[Via Adventure Journal: Teton Boulder Project Comes to Life in the Heart of Jackson Hole]

Love it. A great idea and a great looking park and it went from idea to implementation quickly because the City and Businesses all got behind it.

Another reminder of how slow things are here in Traverse City is the Hotel Indigo. News of a hotel in the warehouse district came in 2008, today's update at MWaT: The Hotel Indigo Tunnel Returns indicates the hotel may not happen at all.

Venice Calling

The Traverse City Commission will consider the Bayfront Plan tonight and what to do about the Spirit Of Traverse City.

I will be telling them I support moving forward with redeveloping Clinch Park without the train even though I have a child who cried when told this might be the last year for the train. (She stopped crying when told there could be a splash park instead and she said that sounded more fun and wouldn't be smelly).

Nostalgia can wound a city.

Venice, Italy was once the center of an ocean-going empire and a key city-state during the Renaissance. But today it has become obsessed with nostalgia and the residents who remain do not let it change. In response the city is literally fading away. It is drowning under a rising ocean and losing population because no one there actually does anything. Or as The Guardian said in 2006: Population decline set to turn Venice into Italy's Disneyland

For comparison, in 1929 New York City tore down the historic Waldorf Astoria hotel to build the Empire State building. A new Waldorf Astoria was built and the Empire State Building became the city's iconic structure.

Let's be less like Venice and more like New York. I want Traverse City to be more than an amusement park in city form that people come to visit. I want it to be a city full of people who do things.

The new Bayfront Park will likely bring more stature to TC than the Spirit of Traverse City has. It is a design that encourages people to do things. This doesn't mean the train cannot be kept and moved elsewhere, but a train at Clinch Park is incompatible with the vision that was developed.

On a final note, please don't take this to mean that in every case we should move out with the old in with the new. Like everything else, a city needs to find a balance between what it keeps and what it replaces with something better. Like how I choose to live in a 19th Century house full of 21st Century technology.

Build It And They Will Come

Surfers are known as people who will chase waves - going to where they need to be for the experience.

The recent October wind storm brought people to the Great Lakes for the surfing experience. See: High winds bring surfers to city

And a Canadian writer describes their trip to Lake Michigan for some late season surfing. See: Chill thrill: November is the best month for surfing on Lake Michigan

People are obviously willing to travel for the experience of good waves. Imagine what an always available Traverse City Whitewater park would do for tourism!

A Smart Dog Park

If Traverse City gets a dog park here's a clever idea of what to do with all the "doggie bags" that will be generated.

See PhysOrg: Dog park lit by dog poop


image at PhysOrg

Why Not Whitewater?

Traverse City Whitewater has a page at Facebook now. Join it. A recent posting indicates they are just about to form a non-profit but need board members and volunteers.

I recently read an article that pointed out how something as simple as a single standing wave can make a city a destination. See MIL: Surfing In Munich

Here's a video from this park in Munich. Why not Traverse City? Look at the crowds watching these people surf. This would be a huge draw for downtown:

Knoxville's Success

Knoxville, TN has a Market Square that succeeds as both a downtown car-free zone and as a plaza for a farmer's market, concerts, and other public amenities.

See SustainableCities: Knoxville’s Market Square Shows Pedestrian-Only Spaces Can Work, Too

Parks

I started this post back in December, and after seeing Gary's post: Do you know where your closest city park is? which includes a map of Traverse City parkland, I decided I should get this wrapped up.

The big news is each Traverse City bay is poised to get revamped parks. The Acme Shoreline Park has a goal of turning one mile of East Bay into a blue mile of beachfront with volleyball courts, a playground, public marina, and open space; all connected to a TART trail spur.

See the Record-Eagle: Shoreline site in Acme to become new park

For West Bay, there is much hope for a completely new bayfront to connect downtown Traverse City to the water.

The new Bayfront Park design was recently revealed. See: bayfront plans are done

The conceptualization hits many highlights for me including a natural play area, an artesian spring and stream, an improved boat launch that will be friendlier to canoes and kayaks, more vegetation, keeping the emergent wetland at the mouth of the Boardman, dark-sky compliant lighting, fish cleaning station, improved access to the park with tunnels, etc.

However, it does appear that this was a great opportunity to develop a dedicated Farmer's Market space in the area but it isn't in the final plans. Also, to make the area more inviting to visitors of all types harness the artesian well in such a way so that boaters and others could fill up their containers with potable water. Much like how travelers stop north of Petoskey on US 31 to fill up with the well by the side of the road there. And I am not sure we need so many roundabouts but that is a topic for another post. You can't have it all I suppose.

I believe a new Bayfront will be a great addition to Traverse City and could serve as a multi-modal hub for the entire region. I hope it gets done. Even better would be tying this in to re-naturalizing the Boardman as it goes through downtown and then tie that into a whitewater park between Cass and Union.

Grand Rapids is trying it. (Grand River as downtown Grand Rapids whitewater course?)

There is a Facebook group for the Traverse City Boardman River Whitewater Park effort.

For more on the Bayfront park see:
TC bayfront plans take a step forward

Bayfront overhaul work could begin in 2011

Next, Traverse City residents clearly want a dog park. Recently in the paper there was this: Dog park project may be in the works

And when Mayor Bzdok made this post: Update for the week of November 29 to December 6 there were many comments from people wanting a dog park.

Not only would an off-leash dog park be good for the dogs but dog-walkers are great to have in the neighborhood. As mentioned in Why dog owners make the best citizens

After dark, the streets fill with dog walkers. A couple per block, at least. In the winter, they're the only people on the streets. Without them, the neighborhood would be lot emptier, and the streets would feel a lot more forbidding. Placing a couple of poodles -- and my neighborhood has a lot of poodles -- on the landscape really does wonders

I have the spot - next to the trail between Oryana and the library. An area some people are calling Old Town Park. My idea is a dog park on one side and let the other side which is already being used by beavers, rabbits, red-winged blackbirds, fox, be allowed to develop naturally. Build a high wall/fence next to the apartments to mitigate noise, though I believe the benefits to those residents having a place to exercise their dog outweighs any negatives.

I like this location because:
- it is centrally located to Traverse City's neighborhoods
- getting dog walkers in this area should help with the graffiti on the Community Sailing building and loitering on the bridge
- Oryana and McGough's should see increased sales of their pet supplies if dog owners are in the area more

And the natural area is important because it will act as a buffer when rail travel returns to the area.

Map (blue line is the park, other line is the natural area):

View Traverse City Dog Park? in a larger map

Finally, parks are great, but without a trail system connecting them (I've heard it described as a "string of pearls") it will not reach its full potential. So I hope that whatever is done is planned with TART so that all of these parks can be reached by non-motorized means.

Additional reading for inspiration:
INFRA: The Best New Urban Parks

NYT: Blueprints for a Better ‘Burb

The Colorado Town That Grew Around A Whitewater Park

This story is indicative of what Traverse City could do in the Midtown area along the Boardman River.

See GOOD: Urban Pastoral: Taking the city to the suburbs

And doesn't this sound like Traverse City:

Buena Vista gave the go-ahead, to the chagrin of some town old-timers who believed, as Katie used to, that all development was evil. They liked Buena Vista precisely because it never changed, so even smart growth was bad growth in their eyes

The idea of a downtown Traverse City whitewater park is not that crazy. See NorthernExpress: A Whitewater Park for Traverse City?

The Best Cities - Smart People And Lots Of Fun Things To Do

Update 1/16/2009
And let's not forget great places to live need great places to relax.
Boston.com: How the city hurts your brain ...And what you can do about it

Traverse City has a good start in being a great small town. But it is not all the way there yet. Living here "feels" as though we're on the verge of either becoming a great place to live and an economic engine or a touristy follower-town.

What makes a place a nice place to visit usually makes it a nice place to live.

There have been some recent articles regarding what makes some cities always attractive and what a place needs to do to be more than a nice place to visit. What is comes down to is put together a lot of smart people and give them fun things to do.

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a research paper titled City Beautiful (PDF).

...past studies have provided only indirect evidence of the importance of leisure amenities for urban development. In this paper we propose and validate the number of leisure trips to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) as a measure of consumers' revealed preferences for local leisure-oriented amenities. Population and employment growth in the 1990s was about 2 percent higher in an MSA with twice as many leisure visits: the third most important predictor of recent population growth in standardized terms. Moreover, this variable does a good job of forecasting out-of-sample growth for the period 2000-2006. “Beautiful cities” disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation, especially in supply-inelastic markets. Investment by local government in new public recreational areas within an MSA was positively associated with higher subsequent city attractiveness. In contrast to the generally declining trends in the American central city, neighborhoods that were close to “central recreational districts” have experienced economic growth, albeit at the cost of minority displacement.

The researchers studied 15 variables to come to their conclusions:

Log Total

Employment in Tourism-Related Activities(1990)

Log Population

Log Number of Colleges

Poverty Rate

Log January Average Temperature (Average 1941-1970)

Log Average Annual Precipitation (1961-1990)

Share with Bachelors Degree

Share Workers in Manufacturing

Share Workers in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate

Average Block-Group Distance to Park

Average Block-Group Distance to Recreation Sites

Log Historic Places per Capita

Coastal Share within a 10 km Radius

Mountain Land Share within a 10 km Radius

Boston.com has more on this research: Urban playground: As politicians weigh economic stimulus for cities, research suggests a surprising way to succeed: make it fun

In their paper, Carlino and Saiz found a statistical correlation between the number of leisure visits to a metropolitan area and the growth of factors like population and housing values. They controlled to determine that the tourism itself wasn't causing the growth, and argue in their paper that people move to the cities for the same reason they visit as tourists. They also demonstrate that investment by local governments in such "recreational capital" - spending on parks, cultural institutions, sports facilities, and other public-private spaces - has succeeded in making cities like Charlotte and San Antonio more attractive to tourists. They compute that a 10 percent boost in such spending yields a 2.3 percent increase in leisure visits, and, if the correlation holds, will also increase growth.
"If you have things that attract high-skilled, high-income individuals, they are more productive," said Carlino, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. "They are the ones who are likely to start up new companies."

And in the NYT Exonmix blog an entry on why NYC continues to thrive: New York, New York: America’s Resilient City

Homo sapiens are a social species; almost all of what we know we learn from each other. Dense cities, like New York, succeed when they take advantage of this fundamental aspect of our humanity. They thrive by enabling us to connect with each other, which then promotes learning and innovation. The current downturn will only increase the returns to being smart, and you get smart by hanging around smart people.

The formula for a great city seems clear: create a city with a temperate climate near a coastline and with museums, colleges, parks, and downtown magnets -> create dense housing in an urban core -> smart people will come to the city -> human capital will make the city great.

Preservation In The Midst Of 1000 Cuts

We're lucky enough in northern Michigan to have large stretches of wilderness. Yet, in urban areas too, a new study indicates preserving patches of green can help mobile species.

See ScienceBlog: Networks of small habitat patches can preserve urban biodiversity

Open Spaces Matter

I am happy to see that Traverse City's Peninsula Township residents approved funding for the Center Road Natural Area Park.

It is well established that housing next to preserved land appreciates more quickly than houses elsewhere in the community.

Now an interesting British study demonstrates that access to green spaces and parks improves people's health and also "counteracts the effects of poverty on deprivation".

See TH: Urban Parks Help Defeat Inequality

A Parking Basement

This is an amazing project: Downtown Houston Rediscovers Green with New Eco-Centric Park

What was a large downtown parking lot in Houston just a year ago, is now Discovery Green, downtown Houston’s new urban park. Underneath the park, an underground parking garage now accommodates the same number of cars as before…no more, no less. An above ground portal, designed by Austin artist, Margo Sawyer, takes drivers from their cars below the Earth up to almost a dozen acres of new centrally located parkspace.

The Best View In Lower Michigan

It is the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy's proposed 'Elberta Dunes South'.

See the RE: View from Elberta Dunes

Progress At The Barns

Via the Record-Eagle: Groups collaborate on GT Commons barns

In April, 2007 I submitted these comments to the 'Brainstorming The Barns' group:

Any solution should have the following goals:

- limit any increase in traffic to keep the area pedestrian friendly.
For example, even though there is not an official use for the Barns area
at this time the road around the property can be dangerous for joggers
and dog walkers.
- do not increase the amount of impenetrable surfaces Use the grassy
areas for parking)
- do not fragment the Farmer's Market
- respect the passed ballot language

As a near-term solution I would like to see the Barns and surrounding land ("The Barns") used as a Park on a fee based as-is basis for organizations looking to rent space. Also grandfather in the current community garden plots. This park would be available for rent ($35/hr; 5 hr minimum) by any group that met certain guidelines (e.g., company picnics, wedding receptions, class reunions, etc).

I once worked for a metro park district that had a large barn which was made available to parties for rent. It was generally used for wedding receptions and family reunions and was rented out almost every weekend. It was a very popular spot in the summer and to get it ready all I had to do was unlock a padlock in the morning.

And I visited Itahca, NY once and saw structures similar to "The Barns". While I was in Ithaca these were used for a wedding reception, a small bluegrass show, and a Scottish Heritage festival. I could easily see similar events at the Traverse City Barns.

Making the barns available for group rental will enhance Traverse City's reputation as a tourist destination as there will three unique venues for groups small to large to use: The Open Space by the Bay (maybe this will change though); The City Opera House; and The Barns area.

The advantage of this proposal is because of its minimal impact it can be implemented immediately without precluding any future long term solution.

Regarding The Barns as a Botanical garden

It appears to me that there is an organized effort underway to lobby for a Botanical Garden at The Barns property by the Botanical Garden Society of Northwest Michigan. I am very excited about the possibility of a Botanical Garden in Traverse City but I do not think The Barns is the best location for it. First of all, constructing a garden will mean something currently on the site will have to go - is that the meadow, wetlands, woods, food plots, or buildings? And would that violate the ballot language? Is there enough space, even with construction, to make a garden as good and large as Traverse City deserves? Secondly, the site is in close proximity woods, meadows, and wetlands and these habitats support many different plants.

Can a botanical garden improve upon nature?

The Barns will be a terrific site for the Botanical society to offer guided walks and point out the native plants to groups.

However, there are more appropriate sites for a botanical garden. I would encourage the Botanical Garden Society of Northwest Michigan to undergo an effort similar to "Brainstorming The Barns" to get community input for where a Botanical Garden should be built.