PROTO-ARCHITECTURE

On June 27th I attended a meeting run by Lynda Humble, the Rowlett City Manager, concerning plans to develop the piece of city owned land known colloquially as the Water’s Edge.  The meeting was a preliminary affair, with the City attempting to provide citizens with as much information about the development process as possibly.  At the time, they were in the midst of negotiating a land lease deal between the City and a partnership between Stratford Land and LSC conveying upon them the rights to develop the site.   Joining Lynda were representatives for the developers including Steve Sanders, Director of Investments for Texas with Stratford, and Shayne Whitehead, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer for LSC. Read the rest of this entry →

The following is a excerpt from a Facebook invitation sent by Councilman Gallops inviting people to engage in the vision for the Water’s Edge development.  The meeting is tonight:

Time

Monday, June 27 · 7:00pm – 8:30pm

---

Location

Rowlett City Hall

4000 Main Street

Rowlett, TX

---

Created By

Michael Gallops

---

More Info

The City of Rowlett is contemplating the execution of a land lease at the July 5 City Council Meeting for City-owned property located behind Pecan Grove Park. The City has had a letter of intent signed with the developer since November of 2008 and has now progressed to the point where a land lease is the next step. The City Council publicly discussed this lease during the work session portion of the June 21 Council meeting (see June 21 Work Session at http://rowlett.com/index.aspx?NID=397).

The developer is interested in creating a mixed-use development that could include residential, office space, restaurants, a government center and a marina. This is precisely the kind of development our citizens have expressed to us they would like to see happen in Rowlett and we are looking forward to exploring this opportunity!

If executed, this lease will give the developer control of the property and they will then engage the community through a planning Charette and other meetings designed to gather input on how Rowlett residents would like to see the property developed and then evaluate what the market will support.

At the conclusion of this public input/data gathering process, which is anticipated to take several months, the Council will have to determine whether the proposed project meets with the community’s vision and generates an appropriate return on investment for the City’s leased land. If so, the project will proceed as planned. If not, the lease will terminate.

The City would like to invite you to a meeting about the development so that you might become educated on the process and where we go from here. The goal is to keep you informed so that you might stay involved as we move forward with this exciting new opportunity.

“It’s hard to believe we’re in Dallas. Yet we’re closer to downtown Dallas than the Galleria is,” -Jerome Weeks Art & Seek

A local Audubon facility originally funded with the approved vote on the Trinity River Project back in 1998, whose land was purchased in 2008 by the City of Dallas, the Trinity Audubon Center is an offspring of the design studio of the renowned southwestern architect Antoine Predock.

I had the opportunity to visit the project several months ago during an AIA Leadership seminar in which we used the event center to consult with local leaders in sustainable design, and I’ll have to admit it was a singular locale for such a conference.  Predock has long been an architect I’ve watched, his designs often owing significantly, and all at once, to modernism, postmodernism, brutalism and ancient historical vernaculars.  His forms, for me, often evoked flavors of Corbusier, Wright, Goff, Johnson and Kahn, while always respecting the individuality of their location.  Locally he’s primarily known for his elegant Turtle Creek House designed in the early ’90s. Read the rest of this entry →

After having participated in the Rowlett Comprehensive Planning Charrette, I’m very excited about the possibilities that our community has open to it.  I’d like to take this opportunity, therefore, to examine the area that is the most likely to experience development first, the Water’s Edge.  If you read my post summarizing the charrette, you’ll remember that the Water’s Edge had formerly been considered for development with a very ambitious master plan in 2009.

This will be the first in a series of posts I’ll make examining this area and what might want to be developed there based on the information I’ve seen and the thoughts I’ve heard from citizens.  First, however, before we consider all the fun stuff, dreaming up what fantastic things might occupy the land,  I’d like to establish a little perspective.

Understanding space is not an easy thing, it takes skill and training, but it is essential to the manage the scope of a successful project. During the charrette a plethora of ideas where thrown out by people for what uses might well be accommodated here.  Clearly not all could be fully realized, but having a grasp on how this land area compares to others nearby should help.  For those Rowlett stakeholders who have an interest in this area, I believe the following analysis will be illuminating. Read the rest of this entry →

Last night I attended the first of four local meetings detailing what happened in the charrette a couple weeks ago, and offering new data based on that event.  Unfortunately it wasn’t terribly well attended, as these things often are not, but I suspect it had something to do with the Mavericks playing in the NBA finals at the same time…just a guess. Read the rest of this entry →

As the country emerges from the great recession, my home town of Rowlett, TX is poised to make the most of the upturn and craft it’s future.  My wife and I have lived here since 2000, and this is frankly the first time we see any energy and optimism around the future development of our little burg.

For those who have never experienced it, this half day long charrette is organized by the city and the development team (comprising urban planners, architects, engineers, economist, etc.) to engage the citizenry and illicit feedback that will help shape the future of the plan going forward.  I engaged in the process for the first time as a citizen, and I hope that my professional experience in community and mixed-use/TOD development offered something unique. Read the rest of this entry →

Last week my wife and I attended the first in a series of interactive planning sessions associated with the Realize Rowlett 2020 campaign to redesign the city’s comprehensive plan.  Being more of a kick off meeting, the organization was such that several stations had been set about the community center room, each dealing with a particular aspect of the city like “people places” or “parks” and all had a map of the city with an associated board for listing citizens’ input. Read the rest of this entry →

Amassed on the Capitol Lawn

With a mob of black clad individuals large enough to make the lay person think someone really important just died, over 260 architects from all over the state of Texas came together at the Capitol building for the first annual Advocates for Architecture day.  Buses packed with participants from both Dallas and Houston left in the wee hours of the morning to trek to Austin, as well as hundreds of other architects making their own way.  The goal was help affect policy in the state legislatures by way of individual architects speaking directly with their own representatives.  While the Texas Society of Architects has an excellent lobbying machine in their own right, there is a distinct difference between a hired lobbyist talking to a representative and one of that representative’s own constituents discussing the issues that effect them.  Utilizing the hashtag #archday, participants tracked and commented on the event throughout the day via twitter. Read the rest of this entry →

On May 13th, the Rowlett Community Center played host to one of the most amazingly bizarre spectacles I’ve seen in my 12 years in architecture.  A developer, Community Retirement Center of Rowlett, LLP, has chosen a location in Rowlett, TX (a sleepy little bedroom community, just outside of Dallas) in which to locate a TDHCA tax credit senior living development.  Now, to be clear, this is not managed care or a nursing home, these are apartments that are intended to cater to low income seniors (55+ yrs old).  You cannot get into the development unless you are at least 55 (or as young as 45 if the spouse of a someone 55+).

The developer started out with an adequate, if graphically underwhelming powerpoint that explained the TDHCA tax credit process, how Rowlett was rated by that organization as a 5 out of 6 on an internal scale of ‘need’ for this sort of facility, and about the requirements of the residents.  The age restrictions are noted above, and if I remember correctly the income levels for the 16 low-income units were +/-$14,000 for a single person, +/-$19,000 per year for a couple. Read the rest of this entry →

I stumbled upon this project by Ron Womack on my way to a client meeting several months ago.  I love these little architectural gems sprouting up around Dallas.  Every few months I drive somewhere I haven’t been in a while and am pleasantly surprised by a new contemporary development. Read the rest of this entry →