Transformative Trail-OrientedDevelopment: Razorback Greenway

Вот отформатированный транскрипт вебинара: Роберт Студевилл: Actually using a different program, and so I'm now figuring out how to make this full screen. Um… Okay. Okay, we're going to get started in just a minute while everybody comes in. So, welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the New Urbanism. On the Park Bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied fields related to the built environment. Today we have Transformative Trail Oriented Development: The Razorback Greenway, with Meredith Bergstrom and Matt Hoffman, moderated by myself, Robert Studeville. And a couple of notes: Join us for CNU 34. CNU 34 will be in Northwest Arkansas, May 12th through 16th. Northwest Arkansas is an epicenter of innovative regional planning ideas. Multiple downtowns are being rebuilt and linked together. Important planning efforts are seeking more rational growth. Um, it's an exciting place that you should see and learn from. Go to cnu.org/CNU34. Consider getting CNUA accredited. Sign up for CNUA, the benefits of accreditation. It provides a marketable credential to employers and clients. CNU accredited professional certificate and listing on Cnu.org public member directory is CNU accredited. Go to cnu.org/getinvolved/getCNUaccredited. And today we're going to talk about transformative trail-oriented development, specifically in the form of the Razorback Greenway. Uh, the only other project I could compare to nationally would be the Beltline in Atlanta. It's having a similarly transformative effect on its region, although these are quite different projects. The Razorback Greenway is a project that nationally we should all be aware of. I don't think anybody knew a couple of decades ago how much a trail could transform a region. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Meredith Bergstrom is a Senior Program Officer for the Home Region Program at the Walton Family Foundation. She partners with nonprofit organizations and local governments to expand access to mobility options, affordable housing, and inclusive public spaces across Northwest Arkansas. She also leads the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, which enhances public life through high-quality design of parks and civic buildings. Before joining the foundation, she worked in urban planning and design with Dover Kohl and Partners in Miami, a firm that all new urbanists are aware of. Matthew Hoffman, AIA, is President of MBL Planning and President Co-Founder of Pattern Zones Company. He spent more than a decade with the City of Fayetteville, Arkansas, serving as Chair of the Planning Commission, the Board of Adjustment, and the city's long-range planning committee. His work in architecture and urbanism has received state and national recognition with the AIA, the World Architecture News, the American Planning Association, and the Congress for the New Urbanism. At MBL Planning, Hoffman leads urban design work across five states, including housing-focused planning and urban design for the Razorback Greenway Corridor plan. I'm going to turn this over to the panelists for a presentation, and then we're going to have a discussion followed by Q&A from the audience. So please use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you, because we will get them. We'll get to them more or less in the order they are received. Thank you very much, and thank you, Meredith and Matt, for being part of this. And I'm going to, and Meredith, please take it away. Мередит Бергстром: Great! Thanks so much for having us. I am really thrilled to get to talk about the Greenway and to also hear from Matt Hoffman about some of the really fascinating work that's going on addressing the future of the Greenway. So I really get to just talk about the history of the Greenway, introduce some of the really special places along it, and then get to pass it over to him. So, um, I work for the Walton Family Foundation. We've now been around for 35 years, and there are actually three program areas of the foundation. There's an environment program that's international in focus and scale, and education program, national in scale. But I work here in our Home Region Program that is focused on place-based philanthropy. And here we focus on, among other things, strengthening public life, improving connectivity, and investing in design that shapes how our fast-growing region is approaching the future and trying to welcome new people while preserving important places. So, I'm going to assume that some people on this webinar are from Northwest Arkansas, and the majority are not. So if you are not familiar with the region, we are tucked into the Ozark Mountains in the northwest corner of the state. My work focuses primarily on our two-county area, Washington and Benton counties, which is comprised of 31 cities. And we are one of the fastest-growing MSAs in the country. So our challenge really is in the next 20 years. We're projected to nearly double our population from about 600,000 currently to a million. And how do we protect our ag land, our natural spaces, while thinking about walkability, density, infill, and trying to get that right? And we have a tremendous opportunity to do that, hopefully with the help of some of the folks like you all that can come to Northwest Arkansas and come to the Congress. So, the Greenway is, as Rob introduced, one of the most significant investments and pieces of civic infrastructure in the region. So last year celebrated its 10th anniversary. It was built in 2015 through a public-private partnership. There was a $15 million federal grant that the Walton Family Foundation matched on a one-for-one basis. And initially it was 30 miles. The Regional Planning Commission here was the primary driver of that work, along with the seven cities that that corridor unites. And since then, because of additional miles added, it's a 40-mile corridor that takes you from south of Fayetteville. You can bike all the way through the square in Fayetteville to the square in Bentonville and north into Bella Vista. And it is paved, protected path for most of its length. There's a few sections of cycle track and on-street that's all buffered. But the majority of it is either a context that you see sort of in this photo or a more urban context. And it continues to see an increase in usage, which is no surprise, um, given what I've talked about with our growth. And because of the Greenway and other cycling investments in the region, it's really transformed from a piece of recreational infrastructure, which is sort of what it was originally built as, to a true transportation corridor, people using it more and more to get to where they're going. Um, but it also generates a tremendous economic impact. Cycling in Northwest Arkansas generates about $160 million of impact annually. And, uh, so… that's what it is today, and I get to also show you some of the beautiful places that you can see along it. But what we were really grappling with a few years ago as a region is, what does this mean for the future? And realizing that there's some unfulfilled potential with the Greenway. Um, a group of stakeholders actually visited the Beltline and started thinking about, we're going to celebrate 10 years of this. What is it… what is the next 10 years mean? So that's really the framing of this conversation. When we were celebrating 10 years of the Greenway, we also were celebrating 10 years of the Family Foundation's Design Excellence Program. And I think this is an interesting framing for you all because the Design Excellence Program that we host is not explicitly tied to the Greenway, and yet, because of the importance of the Greenway, because of the way it serves so many people in the region, and the multimodalism that it offers in terms of how you get to and from important places, we realized that most of the projects that we had supported through the Design Excellence Program are along the Greenway, um, or very close by. So this is a map that just kind of shows you that the Design Excellence Program exists to elevate the quality of public space and civic architecture across the region. And it has supported the design of 20 projects. 10 of those are constructed, open, built. Another 10 are either under construction right now or still in design. And the program supports really architecture, landscape architecture, and now planning initiatives as well. Um… It does that by supporting the design of selective grantees' projects, but also by recommending a list of pre-vetted architects, landscape architects, planning firms to grantees to consider. Those, uh, those firms are local, um, as well as national and international. And the program has brought many prestigious design awards to the region. I would suggest if you're interested in the program more broadly, certainly go to our website. There's great photos of all the projects. But a few that I want to highlight that are along the Greenway. One of the first projects was this. It's an independent nonprofit theater company called Theater Squared, and it was really testing this idea of, um, what does it mean to provide a non-profit theater experience, but do it in such a way that the building is also a public space? So they've got this really lovely lobby with the coffee shop, university students use this, um, for their workspace, and, um, that has proved to be, um, a hypothesis that has worked really, really well, um, as far as offering a public space to Fayetteville. The Ramble, um, is also in Fayetteville and connects Theater Squared to downtown Fayetteville to a newly expanded library. It transformed a part of the Greenway that went through the Fay Jones woods. So this lovely natural space that didn't yet have a way for people to connect with the creek there. So the project was a creek restoration. There's this lovely sort of serpentine elevated boardwalk that you can walk through the woods. And then easily get from there to downtown Fayetteville and these other cultural institutions. This was designed by Nelson Byrd Waltz and supported by the people of Fayetteville with a tremendous investment. And so there's a… the lower Ramble and an upper pedestrian plaza that was formerly an enormous parking lot. Some of the places along the Greenway highlight some of the ways that the Greenway has expanded. So there's now an east-west loop called the Rail Yard Loop that connects downtown Rogers, because that city pretty immediately was like, "Hey, we want our downtown to be connected, and it's not." Um, so, uh, the Rail Yard Park was a reinvestment into downtown Rogers that completely transforms the way that the railroad, which was really the inception of the city originally, interacts with downtown, how people can use that space. There's a play yard. This was designed by Carol Ross Barney, who you all probably know as designing the waterfront in Chicago. And there's now live music every weekend that draws really large crowds from April to October. Luther George Park in Springdale is one of the newer projects to have opened. Again, sort of thinking about these downtowns in the region that are really thinking about how they utilize all the reinvestment to continue to preserve place for existing residents, try not to displace people, grapple with all of that investment. This park, I think, is a wonderful reflection of all of those things. There's this iconic bandshell designed by Trahan Architects. The park itself designed by Civitas. There's this pedestrian alley or walkway that you can see that sort of really connects and draws the eye from a creek restoration that happened on the north end all the way to what was really a missing connection to the main downtown area, which is south of this photo. Just a short walk away from Luther George Park is a newly rebuilt municipal campus designed by Duval Decker Architects, and the city was really trying to consolidate several really disparate buildings that they were operating out of because of all the rapid growth. So they'd added staff over time. And this allows everyone to operate in the same space. It gives a new and really dignified place for their city council meetings. Springdale is one of the most diverse communities in the state of Arkansas, and I think this project really forced them to grapple with, like, what does it mean to have a space that everyone in our community can access for the really important civic discourse that happens? And, um, we're now looking at a couple other municipal projects, city halls, as part of the program. The A Street Promenade in Bentonville is right on the square, and the Greenway takes you right through it. It is, um, I would say, like, probably the newest, at least, and one of the smallest cities to convert a main street into a pedestrian-only plaza. So, this is really worth seeing. We are still, as a community, sort of figuring out how to activate that space. And last but not least, I want to make sure I don't go over time. 8th Street Gateway Park is one that's being constructed, so this is on the western sort of end of a new east-west corridor that connects to the Greenway, and you can see it's going to have this elevated bike-only crossing of a street. And it's really a park that tries to ensure that people in the growing part of the western part of Bentonville have access to the amazing public parks that many of the other community members have. So like I mentioned, this is where we're at now. And the question is, what does this mean for the future? So a group of stakeholders got together, applied for funding through our Design Excellence Program to support the Razorback Regional Greenway Corridor Plan. Um, and we are really excited about the work that's coming out of that. And, um… really trying to think about trail-oriented development. So we have some housing along the Greenway, but a lot of it is in suburban context. What does it mean to preserve green space and the appropriate spaces? Think about denser housing along the Greenway. Think about access and equity, um, and resilience. And so, um, the work that Matt and his team are doing, um, addresses that in really exciting ways, and I'll pass it to him. Мэтт Хоффман: Thank you, Meredith. Let me get started here. Okay. Well, I'm Matt Hoffman. I run a company called MBL Planning that does planning, urban design, and architecture. We're located here in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and through our affiliation with the Design Excellence Program, we have this extraordinary opportunity to work on this project and partner with a company called Field Operations out of Philadelphia. If you're not familiar with Field Operations, it's really worth a Google. They are the landscape architects behind, for example, the High Line in New York City, among several other extraordinary projects. So definitely check them out. The Greenway, Meredith mentioned, is 40 miles, seven cities, and about half of the little under half of the region's half million people live within a short walk or bike ride of the Greenway. Um, extraordinary amount of growth. Meredith mentioned 400,000 people in the next 25 years. That means that about half of the buildings that are going to exist at that time haven't yet been constructed, so big opportunity. If that seems like a big number, uh, that's because it is. We're consistently outpacing national rates of growth in population and employment. And so when you look at the four cities sort of along the Greenway Corridor – Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville, in addition to the others – you can see the scale of growth is significant. This is a multifaceted project. There's quite a lot going on here. We were brought on as a housing consultant on this project, so our little piece is in the lower left-hand corner. That's what we're going to talk about today, is growing new neighborhoods along the Greenway. However, Field Operations' leadership and vision, uh, extends to the other five buckets as well, so six projects for the Razorback Greenway. If you're interested in learning about the other five, please join us for a session that we're going to do at CNU in Northwest Arkansas, where we'll be presenting this along with everything else with our partners at Field Operations. Really looking forward to that. So we're architects, um, everyone in our building here is an architect, and we tend to sort of explore these kinds of projects first from a building-type perspective. All of the stakeholder committee on this project, running through the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission, were municipal planners from each of the seven cities. And, you know, municipal planners are really good at understanding the implications of zoning and development codes. Oftentimes they're not as adept at understanding how building codes tie into that. So one of our first steps was just to do sort of a series of threshold diagrams that help explain sort of the developer side of the equation on, you know, what the various building codes and locally adopted amendments to, you know, how to how to deal with permitting, how to deal with everything else, what that meant from a construction standpoint. So, obviously, we're trying to answer this question: how will we grow? Right now, Northwest Arkansas, a lot of it is still suburban and relatively rural, but if we tried to put 400,000 people in that same development pattern, we would actually need another couple of Northwest Arkansas worth of space in order to withstand that growth. So, pretty early on in the project, it became clear that we needed to explore more compact building types. Um, you know, suburban single-family doesn't quite get us there. Even urban single-family doesn't quite do it. You really have to go all the way into that core of missing middle housing types to start getting down to a footprint size where you can believably locate a significant portion of this new growth along a trail. That's really important because, you know, everyone is always talking about affordability. It's a really hot topic nationwide. We're really adamant that that conversation needs to be had in the context of housing and transportation costs paired together. When you look at that, you really don't want to get over about 45% of household income, and you can see there on the right a couple of the towns that are, uh, sort of representative of the seven on the Greenway. We're really straddling that threshold in Northwest Arkansas of becoming unaffordable when you add those housing transportation costs together. Uh, you know, you can compare that to some other cities, San Francisco, D.C., Boston, where, you know, we might think of housing being much more unaffordable on its own, but, you know, the transit capacity of those places is able to bring their overall costs down. Another kind of constraint that's really important, particularly to the other five projects that I mentioned in the beginning, about 60% of the trail is actually in floodplains. So we have a couple of things that are really pushing us towards those more compact, complete, connected, uh, building types and development patterns. So, this is the first transect that we're going to show. We've got a few to show throughout the presentation, and you'll see why that's important, why we decided to take that approach. This is an existing transect that looks at the existing development patterns across Northwest Arkansas. Anyone who lives in Middle America, or indeed, you know, really anywhere outside of the East Coast, is going to recognize this. You know, it's a lot of surface parking, a lot of low-slung buildings, a lot of development happening, suburban development happening within the floodplains. Um, and you can see the trail context, so that's actual pictures of the Greenway along the bottom. And so through some benchmarking trips, we actually took the entire stakeholder committee out to the Beltline in Atlanta to look at what they have going on there, as well as the the sort of broader conversation about constraints and building types. We came to the conclusion that that we needed to look towards a pretty significantly different vision. Uh, so that's where this trailside transect comes from. But here's the thing about the Greenway and planning projects in general. You know, cities and regions are sort of the thing that happens while everyone's arguing about how to implement the plan. So the last thing we wanted to do is just put a pretty picture of a transect up and say, "Here's what we're going for." You know, think about, uh, if you're living in existing neighborhood, the entire Greenway goes through existing neighborhoods. You know, we want someone to be able to stand on a street corner in their neighborhood once a year, and say, "You know, it's a little different than it was last year, but I kind of like it." So this isn't about sort of complete erasure and large-scale developments. This is about an incremental development plan that helps us transition over the full course of that 25 years to accommodate that growth. It's got to be a great place at every step along the way. Um, you know, most folks who are doing a lot of suburban development would have a lot of suburban developers here in Northwest Arkansas, as I'm sure you do in your communities, you know, they're not thinking about frontage. So we have this challenge of not only how to describe frontage in a normative sense of like how do you front street, but now we're saying, "How do you front a greenway?" So we started building tools according to this transect to help us describe those in a speculative way. And you can see what we have here is a matrix that's built by multiplying horizontal frontage conditions. These are things like four courts, terraces, courtyards, by vertical frontage conditions, so these are architectural things like balconies, vestibules, loggias, storefronts, and then we array that along a sort of a transect scale. So in the lower left-hand corner, you have single-family houses and T3, or, you know, kind of creekside neighborhood contexts. In the upper right-hand corner, you have, you know, larger mixed-use buildings in T5 or T6. So it's not meant to be exhaustive. This is something that's meant to be somewhat speculative and give people a sense or a vocabulary for how, uh, different development products can start to address the greenway in new ways. When you do something like that, obviously you can't just describe new development in terms of frontage. There's a whole lot of things that have to back that up in order to make it possible. So we did a series of loading transition diagrams that help describe that. The column on the left, you're seeing a series of existing conditions that are sort of typical. You might recognize the snout house on the top. Everybody's got those. In the middle, we're recommending a series of sort of improvements that might happen within that existing context. And then on the right, we're suggesting a way that you might address that condition and that transect zone in a greenfield context or a redevelopment context. So in terms of what that looks like, here's an example from T5. You know, we're looking at things like, how do you take an engineered stormwater facility or an engineered detention facility on site and turn that actually into a placemaking aspect, turn that into something that provides a sense of place on site? That, along with greenway access. There's a lot of backdoors that face the greenway right now, a lot of privacy fences that face the Greenway right now. Um, parking is always a huge piece of this. How do we right-size roads and streets so that we can get on-street parking, uh, and pull that parking away from the Greenway frontage condition? So we have this kind of arrayed across all the different transect zones. By the way, please don't read this slide. There's way too much information here, but I just wanted to give you a sense. So as we move from, you know, T3, T4, T5, T6, we're now using this transect approach as a way to understand how we can transition each of these different contexts across the entire, uh, the region. So that's kind of what the transect is, at least what the Greenway transect is. Now we have to decide, okay, where is the transect? Where does it go? We did that with a housing workshop. We brought planners from all seven cities in. We printed off about 150 3D printed tiles representing each of the transect zones, and we had this huge base map, and we asked the planners to think regionally. So in round one we said, "Okay, paint the tiles and, you know, put them in the appropriate locations across the Greenway corridor." But there's a twist: "You can't develop in your own town." So each of them had had to think about the context of the region through every other town. And then in round two, we said, "Okay, now you can go back and critique the development that other planners did in your town." And so this was a pretty powerful way to kind of daylight all of the all of the divisions and conflicts and areas for collaboration and vision that happen across the entire corridor. And pretty quickly, this became really generative for the entire project. So you can see here where we've actually taken the results of all those tiles arrayed across the gigantic conference table and projected them up. Now you get this kind of elevation that describes the episodic nature of the Greenway Trail from Bella Vista on the left all the way to South Fayetteville on the right. And of course, this began to inform the rest of the project. So those those five other buckets for how we're dealing with blue-green corridors and commuting. You know, it became a pretty powerful tool. The thing is, you know, when you've got seven city planners, you've got seven cities, you've got seven zoning codes, you've got seven development codes. So this transect approach is really critical for helping everyone come to the table with a consistent vocabulary. Everyone has said it. I'll say it again. Northwest Arkansas is an extraordinary place, and we certainly hope you can all join us. Seeing you. Роберт Студевилл: Rob, you can take it away. Rob, do you want to kick off question-answer round? You're muted, Rob. There you go. Well, sorry. Yeah, I guess we could keep that slide up, or you maybe want to stop sharing, Matt, and and we could. Okay. Have a close-up of our faces. So fantastic that that's really great presentations for both of you. And I wanted to thank everybody who is part of this. We got a good group of people out there. And I wanted to remind everybody to put questions in the Q&A. We will get to those shortly. Discussion here. One thing, um, I mean, a number of things jumped out about those presentations, probably more than I can ask about, but Meredith, you said there was $150 million annual economic impact, which strikes me as a very good return on investment, considering it's a $15 million federal grant, as well as matching local funds. So what does that $150 million entail? And was this expected to this degree? I mean, when you were planning this project, were you expecting that kind of an economic impact? Мередит Бергстром: We had the benefit last year during this sort of this 10-year anniversary, and talking with, because I wasn't involved in the planning, but talking with all the folks that were, um, really most of them at the Regional Planning Commission, um, who did a just an incredible task in planning and coordinating across all seven cities to get this built. So I can confidently say, no, I don't think anybody was expecting it to… to, um… to mean what it has for the region. I mean, at the time, um, there were cities that, uh, really struggled to get on board with the idea of the Greenway coming through their city. Uh, I think there was some fear from folks that, um, you know, there would be, like, higher crime along the Greenway, or the property values would decrease even. I mean, you know, it's like the the benefit, um, that we now sort of all take for granted is something that was proven because we built places like this. So now we certainly see that there's a premium for properties that are along the Greenway, and how to… so now we're sort of thinking about, like, how do we make sure that we preserve access and equity along the Greenway and and all these new trail networks as we're building them out. So I think it has wildly surpassed the expectations of what it would provide, not only to individual cities, but, you know, at the way that people think about Northwest Arkansas has also changed because we have this piece of regional infrastructure that connects. Роберт Студевилл: To Matt, what are the components of this economic impact that you see? Мэтт Хоффман: Yeah, I think we're just… as much as has been done, and I think it's extraordinary, I think we're just now beginning to see what's possible. You know, we did surveys with… I think we had almost 2,000 respondents, and the truth is that, right now, 97% of users on the Greenway are still recreational, so we haven't even scratched the surface of, you know, what we can do with this, really, as a kind of regional transportation network, what that looks like for the ways that new development will begin to address the trail. You know, I'll give you an example of that. When we studied the Beltway in Atlanta, new companies that are locating along the Beltway in Atlanta are seeing as much as 30% of their employees commuting via that trail network. And, you know, right now, we're nowhere close to that, but I think we can all see the path between here and there, and so that's sort of… that's what's really exciting to me. Роберт Студевилл: Considering how, you know, you did the right-of-way here, and you linked the communities together, and you got this built in really just a few years, uh, how feasible is a project like this in another region, or other regions across the country? Мэтт Хоффман: I… well, I don't, um… I don't want to act like this is easy, you know? Northwest Arkansas has a number of built-in sort of unfair advantages. And I think that's okay. I think that, um, you know, every city, every region has their own set of unfair advantages, and it's about trying to figure out how to work within that context. It's an extraordinary accomplishment, and it's not been replicated elsewhere to many great extent. Um, but could it? Certainly? Certainly. Роберт Студевилл: Do you have thoughts? Мередит Бергстром: Yeah, I would just add that we were talking about sort of other greenways that the projects and how before this call we're talking about, you know, how this is slightly different. So you know, I think the biggest takeaway for me, traveling to other places and riding some of those networks. We were talking about even, you know, a couple of years ago, the Congress was in Cincinnati, and I got out and wrote a portion of the Crown Network that's being built. It's so hard to build, uh, to retrofit a trail like this into urban contexts. And so it was very hard to get this built, and I think the fact that it is done, and now we can continue to infill around it, um, and use tools like the transect that Matt's team has built is just an incredible opportunity. But one that can also provide lessons and, you know, that can be used elsewhere. Роберт Студевилл: How did you retrofit this trail into all these communities and get it built, you know, within a decade? I mean, that seems amazing and other people would like to know that. Мередит Бергстром: Yeah, I mean, it's everything you think, right? It was like it was a lot of detailed work. It was purchasing right of ways. It was cities getting on board and using every tool that they had at their disposal. It was modifying the route many, many, many, many times. Um, even to the point of, like, once it was almost nearly complete, um, being like, "We can't get the path through here, so it's not ideal, but we're gonna loop around this other way." You know, we we I don't know if you've thoughts on that, Matt, or but how how that happened. Мэтт Хоффман: No, that's… you know, it's… it's gotta be an all-the-above strategy, you know, and I think… Now, with new development, almost all the towns are trying to expand the network out into the fabric, right? And so the development community is much more used to, you know, property dedication to allow that network expansion. Um, you know, but the greenway was kind of that first piece that got everyone on board with that idea. So, but yes, it's… it's floodplains, it's, it's, uh, you know, it's municipal property, it's private property, it's, it's some places, it's protected on-street network, that's… although that is more rare, it's all the above. Роберт Студевилл: So we've got some great questions coming in, so I'm just going to go jump right into them. Scott Bernstein asks, "Thanks for continuing to highlight the combined H&T affordability issue. It seems the regional greenway framing is similar to what's proposed for a bus rapid transit corridor. How might these two emergent assets work best together?" Мэтт Хоффман: Yeah, I think it's, um… well, you know, speaking from from our perspective, doing the Greenway Corridor, we're certainly very aware of Highway 71 or old Highway 71 as it is, which runs roughly parallel. It crosses the Greenway a couple times. And, you know, I think that's where a lot of folks have talked about BRT going in. So we're not doing this in a vacuum. We're very aware of that. I hope that at some point in the future, excuse me, we're able to do that 71B plan in a regional context and really pull all this together, uh, because it is going to be quite powerful. Роберт Студевилл: Is the Razorback Greenway Quarter Plan a public document yet, or is it still being worked on? Мэтт Хоффман: It's… it's still being worked on. So, you know, I think, um… you know, I don't want to speak out of turn here. I think the Family Foundation and the Regional Planning Commission are still working out next steps. So you… It will be a public document at some point. But it will be. Um… Y'all are getting a great preview. Роберт Студевилл: Craig Dellapena asks, "Uh, I've noticed a program on HTTV that is based on Bentonville, where a couple of renovates deficient housing houses for young couples who are moving there. This program has been on for several years now. Has it made an impact?" Мередит Бергстром: So, I think you're talking about Fixer to Fabulous, and yeah, I've watched. I pass by several of the homes that have been on the show. Um, I mean, I think that question really gets at, like, the thing that we're grappling with, um, that you might expect in Northwest Arkansas, which is that people used to think that of this place is affordable. It was a calling card. But along with our growth and all the investments that we've had, um, and the general lack of diverse types of housing, we are now really in an affordability crisis, much like other places across the country. Our MSA experienced the highest percentage increase of the single-family home of any place in the country in 2022. So even though the housing market has slowed down a little bit, the need for affordable housing, um, and the need for that to be along places like the Greenway, um, is just getting more and more acute. Роберт Студевилл: Do you have any answers on affordable housing now that you mention it? It's probably could… we could have a whole other show, I'm sure, but. Мередит Бергстром: Yeah, we… I mean, I would love to dive into that. I feel like this is, like, the next frontier for CNU. I want to talk about it so much because we have to approach it from every every angle, I think. But I will say that at the foundation, we have invested in several affordable housing projects. There are other great foundations in the region, like the Accelerate Foundation that is partnering on this. And, um… I absolutely think we have to think about where affordable housing can be located along Green. And when I say affordable housing, I mean both market, you know, market solutions that allow for more housing, um, at various sizes and price points, and subsidized, dedicated affordable units, um, which are becoming more and more difficult to produce with fewer and fewer state and federal subsidies. But we've got to figure it out. Роберт Студевилл: We will, um, probably… maybe you'll have another On the Park Bench on affordable housing in Northwest Arkansas. Um, Aaron Goode asks, "How do you monitor usage of the trail? Do you have infrared or other counters that are quantifying ridership? How do you determine which trips are for recreation and which are for commuting and other essential trips?" Мередит Бергстром: The cities do put out electronic monitoring devices. Usually, it seems like they use the little rubber things that that count folks. You see those constantly out there. So I think all the cities are consistently monitoring, you know, actual bodies on the Greenway. Мэтт Хоффман: As far as user segments go, I mentioned we did a really robust public survey program early and late in the Phase 1 of the Greenway project, and we were able to identify with a good level of nuance, you know, who lives where and how they use the Greenway. Мередит Бергстром: I'll just double-click on that, because we… like, measuring usage of active transportation infrastructure like this is so complicated because the the counters encounter a lot of issues like if there's like a wasp nest on it that can like mess with the data. We don't have them everywhere, but they they still are the most important way to measure usage. So every time the foundation supports a project, and now I think it's really part of the way that the city's approach their transportation infrastructure development as well as, like, including counters, and then maintaining that as part of the… either the Parks and Rec Department or the Transportation Department. So tools like surveys become really important because sometimes it's just, you know, if you can conduct a large effort like that that is statistically significant, you can just get a fuller picture of the usage. Ben. We are starting to try to use things like Strava Metro data and other things. But there's there's no silver bullet when it comes to measuring this stuff. Роберт Студевилл: When you go on the trail, is it really crowded? Is it just, like, super popular? Or what's the situation? Мэтт Хоффман: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it can be, and you know, that was one of the another lesson from the Beltway, where it's, you know, it's like, uh, morning rush hour on there sometimes. We actually, as part of the plan, um, are needing to look at, you know, areas where the trail needs to be expanded, and maybe even broke out by mode, where you've got bikes and pedestrians separated. That's another really critical piece of the commuter aspect of this, is trying to make it commuter ready and you know, be intelligent about where we apply those sections across the region. Роберт Студевилл: Who controls the design of the trail, and what's and this is another question from Ben. And what strategies were implemented to bring people on board with the vision as the project was getting started? Мередит Бергстром: So, um, actually, over the last several years, another regional entity has been created to help with the maintenance standards, um, called the Razorback Greenway Alliance. So that is an interlocal agreement between the seven cities along the Greenway, so they each have a board representative. And that's an initiative of the Regional Planning Commission. So they've largely taken on the task of developing regional standards that every city commits to maintaining and also branding the greenway so they have been working on rebranding and actually more consistent signage and wayfinding along the length. Um, but some of that was trial and error over the past 10 years. I mean, there were, um, standards that each city had to commit to when, um, when the project was initially built. But it became clear that, you know, as far as maintenance needs and and ensuring that any modifications or improvements that were made followed a regional set of standards so that it's consistent along the length, and people can sort of understand it, um, as a user has been something that we've worked on. Роберт Студевилл: Jeff Moon asks, "Have you identified opportunity parcels along the trail that small-scale developers could get along, get involved with? And is there support or support mechanism like a local InkDev group that could train small developers?" Мэтт Хоффман: Okay. Yeah, I can take that. We did a pretty robust parcel analysis as part of the existing conditions review. And so we we broke out every parcel within a half mile of Greenway by different size, and actually it turns out that, um, you know, it's really that sort of infill scale, that small-scale developer, uh, type parcel that represents the biggest opportunity along the length of the Greenway. So, almost everything is in existing neighborhoods, almost all of the parcels are sized for kind of missing middle style developments that, you know, new urbanists know and love. And I think as we get, you know, deeper into the project and figure out how this is going to be implemented, yeah, I think you're going to see all kinds of really interesting tools deployed. Роберт Студевилл: How are you preparing land around the Greenway for development? I imagine there probably needs to be infrastructure built to enable parcels to be built. There might be some other barriers that would be preventing development from occurring all along the Greenway. So how are you doing that? Мэтт Хоффман: Well, I think this is the kind of a first step towards figuring out how to do that, right? In the beginning, the vision for the trail was build the trail. Uh, you know, Mary talked about the challenges of just making that happen. And now that that's been done, you know, this second phase, which is represented by this project, is trying to dig deeper into what the vision is, and how do we accomplish it. You know, one of the… one of the biggest challenges to developing along the Greenway, and indeed to developing anything anywhere in Northwest Arkansas is that you have seven different zoning codes to learn. You've got, you know, seven different development codes. You've got seven different approaches to applying the building code and to permitting. And so, you know, we're hopeful that at some point in the future, this kind of transect-based approach will allow us to bring some consistency, you know, at least in this limited context, where folks who are interested in doing something incremental, maybe a small-scale development, can come in and say, "Oh, okay, I at least know the… I at least understand the rules for how to do a greenway development." Мередит Бергстром: And I would add that, um… We are also in the midst of trying to understand some infrastructure constraints at a regional scale. So because of our growth, we all… there are real limits to, like, sewer capacity or electric grid, our landfill that we are going to have to face as a region that affect not just each city, but because the land and the systems aren't always following the same sort of boundaries as the cities are. Um, we are also, as a region, the foundation has a grant to the Northwest Arkansas Council, which is another regional entity that does great work that is… and they're conducting a regional growth strategy that DPZ CoDesign is leading. Um, that plan is nearing completion, and so it's really good timing that a lot of these efforts are synergistic. Um, but one of the… one of the goals of that plan is to consider what other regional authorities or collaborations are needed to address some of our wastewater capacity issues. In particular, along with other things, um, at scale. And how do we think about where to grow so that we are, you know, building densely along corridors like the Greenway, places that both have capacity and are smart growth, um, versus sort of sprawling out in ways that will cost more. So all that to say, there are real constraints, but I think things like the Greenway Corridor Plan provide a guiding document that's really important to follow as well. Роберт Студевилл: Clifford Conke asks about the term trail-oriented development, and are there any good books on this? I haven't seen any, but you know, how common is this term getting? Is it really, uh, is it conceptually well thought out at this point? Мэтт Хоффман: Um, I think we're getting closer to that. If anyone knows a good book, please, please drop it in the chat. You know, I think we're all just kind of learning about this as we go. But I do think it's an incredibly important part of how we should be thinking about the future of the new urbanism. Роберт Студевилл: Daniela Beltran asks, "Have you received developer feedback on the trail fronting design guidance? Wondering how those guidelines are beginning to transition into built works." Мэтт Хоффман: Yeah, so, you know, I think there's feedback in terms of looking at best practices of what has been done, both here and nationally. You know, it's not the case that no one is doing this. I mean, there's some… there's some great projects. Both from the Design Excellence Program, but more broadly from without the Design Excellence program, right? Just local developers doing great stuff that gives us an incredible amount of intelligence. I think you're starting to see the inertia of the development pattern turned towards facilities like this. I mean, Meredith mentioned that massive impact of just bicycling in general across our region. You know, developers are pretty keen to that, and pretty keen to be a part of that. And so, yes, you know, I think we're trying to be both responsive and sort of speculative with those kinds of tools. Роберт Студевилл: What has been the State DOT's involvement, and have they been helpful? You know, state DOTs are kind of notorious for sometimes getting in the way of new urbanism. What do you… Um, what's your response on that? Мэтт Хоффман: Well, it's not a highway. So that's good. You know, I mentioned before, it does intersect at a few key places, particularly Bella Vista with Highway 71. And there are ongoing conversations across the region about how we're gonna handle Highway 71. Fayetteville has already taken the step of sort of jurisdictional transfer and taking that back from the state. The state is really keen to do that. Arkansas, just as a state, has an absurdly high number of highway miles, and our DOT is really excited to kind of offload some of that. So there's some aligned incentives across, you know, state and local governments to try to tackle that problem. So it's not purely adversarial, I would say. Мередит Бергстром: And it comes up all the time, not just with the Greenway, but, you know, especially as cities are seeking to expand the network. Right now, the biggest barrier is just that it, um… if you're building new trail and or other active transportation infrastructure, it just extends the timeline dramatically to go through all the review, and that can also add cost. Роберт Студевилл: This was asked, "Was there any regional local legislation that helped fund build out of the Greenway and programs that give… gave development entitlements or bonuses in exchange for construction or funding of the trail?" Мередит Бергстром: You want to take that, Meredith? Yeah, I… I mean, uh… no, not that I'm aware of. I think it's all happened, like, on a more ad hoc, um, basis. Matt, I don't. Мэтт Хоффман: Yeah, in terms of… From the… from the developer perspective, um, you know, I would say that this second phase of trail development in Northwest Arkansas where folks are making those cross connections, those perpendicular connections that come into the Greenway. Um, you know, that's where you're seeing a lot more on the developer side to kind of participate in the actual construction of the trail. But, you know, initially, this was a very energetic effort on the part of the Regional Planning Commission. Мередит Бергстром: And, I mean, we've danced around this, but, like, a note on the importance of planning. So now I've made a comment to an earlier question about this, but almost every of the seven cities and then other communities that aren't along the Greenway now have active transportation plans that have, you know, that their city councils have adopted. Um, and so they're actively tracking their goals. There's also a Northwest Arkansas regional bike ped plan that the Regional Planning Commission produced. And so tracking towards those goals, knowing exactly where the preferred corridors are has really paid off for the region, so… Regional Planning Commission just last year got a fairly large grant that would add a side paved side path all along a new highway corridor. They've been working on that for for probably almost a decade as well. Um, so the fact that that's all embedded in planning documents, that cities have responded to the Greenway by adding a bike or ped coordinator position and dedicated funding every year to trail maintenance and additions. I mean, this has all started to be embedded in sort of the DNA of the region, which means that we can do more and more over time. So even though we're not there yet to where people… it's, like, easy to get around on your bike for work or your daily errands, like. That's the goal, and it doesn't just start by doing it, right? You have to get it in those planning documents. So now, when a developer does have a plan for something, they have to look at the city plan, like, "Oh, that's where a trail corridor is supposed to be." Роберт Студевилл: How much was the total cost of the development of this trail? You may have mentioned this, Meredith, in your presentation. Мередит Бергстром: Yeah, it was $30 million initially. It was a $15 million federal raise grant. Very many, so half half federal and half local. Мэтт Хоффман: I think we're up to 38 for the for the 40. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes. But that was for 30 miles. So you know, that's isn't that cute? A million dollars a mile? That was that's what it used to cost. Роберт Студевилл: Did cities pass trail-oriented ordinances to encourage growth along the trail? Or are they planning on doing so? Мэтт Хоффман: Yeah, you're starting to see some of that. You know, Fayetteville has, uh… Lauren had a little bit of a reputation for being a little more experimental, uh, shall we say, in terms of those kinds of ordinances. And so they do have, um, you know, you're starting to see tandem lot ordinances and requirements for frontage and things like that. And I think you'll see that matriculate across the corridor. Роберт Студевилл: Hmm. And this gets into another question by Janet, "Great work developing the transect. Can you expand a bit on how it will be implemented? Will new development be required to conform to it? Or is it anticipated to be more advisory? Will it be coded?" Мэтт Хоффман: Uh, yes. And this gets into sort of what the future of this plan is. You know, we're certainly really excited to continue working on it. Hopefully with each of the seven cities in turn. I think it's a little open-ended right now, how it ends up working, whether it's, for example, an incentive-based program. One of the things that we work on in our office in partnership with Pattern Zones is pre-approved building programs, so we're working on pre-approved building programs in Fayetteville, uh, and Rogers right now. Bentonville has also signaled interest in that kind of idea for doing something on the incentive side versus something on the overlay side, where it's more of a kind of traditional coding effort. I think you could see, uh, kind of a both-and approach. And really, what we're excited about, again, is just the opportunity to bring some consistency to a region that's been very patchwork in terms of these regulations. You know, every developer that works in Northwest Arkansas is used to that patchwork nature, and they kind of become specialists at Bentonville, or specialists in Fayetteville, or what, you know, wherever they work. Uh, but it would be great if we could get a more consistent approach, at least to this facility as a kind of first step towards a more regional… regionally consistent understanding of how to play by the rules. Роберт Студевилл: Well, we are at the the one-hour mark. It's 1 o'clock, and and we will be posting this video to cnu.org early next week. Uh, but, uh, do we have time for… can we fit in a few more questions? Do you guys have time to? Мередит Бергстром: Yeah. Sure. Talking for a few minutes. Роберт Студевилл: Ryan asks, "Could you expand more on how the relationship between the municipalities and the foundation began? Funding options for projects like this are volatile and competitive. So I'd like to hear more about how the public-private partnership began." Мередит Бергстром: Um… Yeah. So, you know, I keep mentioning Regional Planning Commission. So come to the Congress and all their staff will be here, and I'm I'm keep shouting them out. So I mean, as far as the inception of the the project and sort of the application. As I mentioned, that was just a tremendous undertaking. And in this environment, you know, to bring it forward now, like, how do you… how do you fund something now? It is really challenging. The grant I mentioned that they got last year ended up getting sort of halted and all of the sort of back and forth of federal grants that were canceled and then not canceled, and then canceled and not canceled. So, I mean, my best answer to that is sort of what I was saying about planning. I mean, I think it's easy to sort of think like, "Oh, well, um, it takes too long to put a plan together and then have all, you know, city council pass it, and then you never know if you're going to find the funding." But you have to have it in the document, and you have to have done all that massive public engagement effort to say, "Yes. Like, we did the work, we know there was a lot of input into this." And now the city has said, "This is where this is going to go," or the region has said, "This is where this is going to go." Um, and then you're ready when… when the funding is available, either through public or private funds. Um, and we are still seeing federal grant opportunities for active transportation and trail infrastructure. So that's my answer. I don't know, Matt, if you have anything to add to that. Мэтт Хоффман: Okay, well, Scott asks a somewhat complicated question. Matt's observation about almost all trail greenway trips being recreational, uh, yet your vision includes economic development. And I guess there was, there already is an economic impact. In Chicago, the 606 elevated trail had more balanced effect on both. Are there sufficient destinations such as stores, restaurants along the corridor, or are specific incentives envisioned to make sure there's somewhere to walk and ride? Two along the trail from the trail to my earlier question. BRT synergy. Most trips are non-work, but transit is mostly planned for community. How do you bring these mismatches together? Мэтт Хоффман: Yeah, it's a it's a great question. I'll try. I'll try to stay focused here. So I already mentioned that, you know, the vision for the trail in the beginning was to build a trail. So what you ended up with is, uh, trail that runs through a ton of different land use contexts. There's parts of the trail that are very agricultural in nature. There's parts of the trail that run, you know, sort of behind the back fences of, you know, suburban neighborhoods. There's parts that run through industrial areas, there's parts that run through really incredibly vibrant commercial districts and our downtowns. So, the land use context is could not be more diverse, right? And the land use context, you know, wasn't designed in service of the trail, it was designed in service of, you know, whatever the community vision was 30 years before the trail was even a dream. So, now, you know, I think through this effort and through other efforts, and I think we're going back and trying to figure out how to get those restaurants, those stores, those destinations. When we did our survey, we found that, um, that's mostly what people are interested in. In the near term, you know, since they are doing that kind of recreational use on the trail, they want to be able to ride to a tap room. They want to be able to ride to something to do on the trail. Um, and it's not that that doesn't exist right now. I think people would like to see more of it, um, but we know, uh, from a growth perspective, that we have got to focus equally on those destinations and on the housing component to make that really work. So that's… that's what this plan is about. Hopefully I answered the question. Мередит Бергстром: No, I think that's exactly right. And I I would just add that part of what we're focused on in thinking about how to make it easier for people to bike, walk, and take transit in Northwest Arkansas, because there are a lot of obstacles, is, um, thinking about the easiest trips first. So, um, you know, a commute is sometimes sort of the hardest thing to change. But making it easier for people to, um, be able to ride their bike to the grocery store nearby, or to a friend's house, or to school. That feels like we can make more progress more quickly. So that's a lot of how we're sort of, I think some of the cities, some of the most successful efforts are, um, thinking about getting that easiest trip to be safe and convenient for people to take their bike. So that's not just the Greenway, right? That's the whole active transportation network. Мэтт Хоффман: This is… One thing I'll ask… sorry, Rob, one thing I want to add to that, that we kind of figured out along the way here, you know, we're constantly drawing these maps that show a 40-mile-long trail, but, right? For almost no one in Northwest Arkansas. Does that 40 miles really matter except for, you know, the twice annual square-to-square ride? No one's getting on the trail and riding 40 miles. They're getting on the trail and they're riding a couple miles. And so, you know, we've really had to look segment by segment at, you know, what does this area make sense? Is this a commuter-focused area? Is this a recreationally focused area? Are we connecting to parks? Are we connecting to restaurants? Are we connecting to housing? You know, it's really about those episodes that play out along the way. Роберт Студевилл: This was touched upon, but I think it's an important topic. How is the trail maintained? Who funds it? Мередит Бергстром: It's, uh, really each city. So, uh, the Razorback Greenway Alliance, as I mentioned, it was an entity formed to help address this. And each city pays some membership dues into that. And they're taking on projects like a lighting study. Um, as I mentioned, branding, but, um, each city maintains their own pieces of the trail. One thing that the Alliance can help do is sort of help prioritize where, from a sort of regional perspective, like, where are the worst or most important areas to improve. Um, so the greenway itself includes some really amazing tunnels underneath some of the trickiest and busiest highways, but certainly there's still places that are where improvements are needed. And so some of that can have some of that. sort of planning and prioritizing can happen at more of the bird's-eye level view, but each city maintains the operation… the maintenance of the sections of trail. Роберт Студевилл: I should mention, if you come to see CNU 34, there will be tours of the trail, and I think a bike tour that goes along it. And if not multiple, and as well as presentations. Any final thoughts about this, Matt and Meredith? Мэтт Хоффман: Well, I just want to thank Rob Yu and the Congress for the New Urbanism for the opportunity to talk about this. You know, it's where you live is it's important to everyone. Northwest Arkansas, you know, it's our home. It's really, you know, deeply held in our… in our heart, and it's not just a project, it's a place. And so, I just can't wait to share that with everyone when you come to Northwest Arkansas. I think you'll feel that when you get here. Мередит Бергстром: Yeah, nothing better to end on than that. And I agree, and I mean, I because of the the resources that we have here from the the foundation that I work for and others, but mostly because of the heart of people like Matt and so many developers, um, the people that work at our planning commissions and cities that are all working towards this like it feels to me like we're at this really important moment in Northwest Arkansas. I'm really excited for the Congress to be here, because I think we have the opportunity to get things right. And if we don't, we have a lot to lose. So come help us figure it out, bring the incredible brain trust that is the members of CNU, but also let us show you what we've been up to. Роберт Студевилл: Thank you. Thank you, Matt and Meredith, and everybody who attended and asked questions. And we'll be seeing you again on On the Park Bench. Thanks.