Remove ImagesCity Chips In $50,000 For Fancy Architect
February 07, 2013
The High Point City Council on Monday, Feb 4 voted unanimously to give the High Point City Project $50,000 toward the $410,000 cost of hiring the Miami-based architectural firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) to design a new High Point city center along North Main Street and redesign High Point's furniture showroom district and the commercial areas around High Point University.
At a meeting of the City Project earlier in the day, Richard Wood, the City Project's point man on the DPZ project, said the City Project has $370,450 in private donations in hand. The City Council's $50,000 contribution brings that up to $420,450.
The contract with Duany Plater-Zyberk, signed by City Project Chairman Aaron Clinard but not yet signed by DPZ, pending the City Council vote, provides that the company will be paid the $410,000 plus up to $40,000 in reimbursable expenses, which, if maxed out, would bring the cost of the company's services to $450,000.
Wood said that architect Andrés Duany, a founding partner of the firm, and his team will come to High Point May 8 through May 15 for a public "charrette," or design brainstorming session, which will involve the company's designers, city officials, the public and representatives of organizations such as the City Project, the Uptowne High Point Association and High Point University.
Architect Tom Low, the director of the Charlotte office of DPZ and, according the contract, part of the DPZ team that will come in May, has said the company will open a design studio in which a 50-50 mix of High Pointers and outside experts will spend seven to 10 days brainstorming on High Point's future.
According to the contract, Duany will be the project principal, Low will be the project manager, and the team will also include, as subcontractors, High Point based Freeman Kennett Architects; Hall Planning & Engineering Inc., which does traffic engineering; The Community Land Use and Economics Group, which does land-use planning; and the engineering firm The Crabtree Group.
Wood said the City Project received the $370,450 in 83 donations ranging from $3 to $125,000, the latter being the amount contributed by High Point University President and CEO Nido Qubein. In September 2012, Qubein organized a fundraising dinner to kick off the drive, in addition to making his contribution.
The contract provides that DPZ will produce an economic feasibility or market study, hold the charrette and produce a drawn master plan, perspective drawings, detailed plans of a complete build-out of a key section of the three neighborhoods, a parking plan, building floor plans, and several regulatory documents, including a zoning ordinance customized to suit the plan.
Wood predicted a large turnout for the charrette, the first session of which will be held in the High Point Theatre. He said, "We think we're going to have a tiger by the tail."
Clinard said the rest of the charrette process will take place in the old Wright's Clothing Store building at 126 N. Main St.
City officials up the food chain recommended the $50,000 in city funding. In a Jan. 30 letter to High Point City Manager Strib Boynton, City Project Executive Director Wendy Fuscoe, a High Point city employee, recommended approval of the $50,000.
Fuscoe wrote, "The Washington Street District Plan was completed in 2008, but there is no such plan for Uptowne."
In a Jan. 31 memo to High Point Mayor Bernita Sims and the City Council, Boynton recommended spending the $50,000.
"I support and recommend your approval," Boynton wrote. "The City Project has raised $370,450 or 90% of the $410,000 necessary contract dollars from private sources, including more than 80 High Point citizens and businesses. At 90%, the private dollars represent significant wide-spread support for the DPZ planning process."
The City Council approved the $50,000 with no discussion.
Clinard said that some of the strongest supporters of hiring DPZ are among High Point's largest building owners.
"They stepped up in a substantial way," he said. "That tells me that they're interested in a substantial way in what happens in this planning process."
The City Project brought Duany to High Point on March 25, 2012. In a series of meetings with High Point officials, business groups and the public, he critiqued High Point in a series of humorous but all-out assaults on city planners, environmentalists, architects, bureaucrats, road and highway designers and even High Point itself.
Duany, a proponent of New Urbanism, is perhaps best known to the public at large for designing entire master-planned towns, including Seaside, Florida, and Kentlands, Maryland. In Greensboro, his firm helped design the Southside and Willow Oaks neighborhoods.