“Call us the ”˜Lou and Stu Road Show,”™” said Lou Marquette, executive vice president for construction of Leyland Alliance in Tuxedo and his partner, planner Stuart Turner, president of Turner Miller Group in Suffern, referring to a new idea the two have hatched to get communities to embrace integrating and congregating all in one place.
The pair brought plans to a March 4 breakfast at Goshen”™s Harness Racing Museum. Their mission is to get Hudson Valley residents to buy into an old concept: real, walkable neighborhoods with stores, restaurants ”¦ and people that actually live and work there.
Neighborhoods may work in urban centers, but here in suburbia, a five-acre tract for a single house and housing that divides age groups rather than mingling them have been the norm, not the exception. Marquette and Turner would like to turn that notion around, especially for the “not in my backyard” set who moved to the “country” and who then want to pull up the drawbridge behind them.
Turner and Marquette say in tandem the need to keep families together and provide housing “for our children and their own children, as well as for grandparents, makes building neighborhoods, not developments with five-acre parcels, a no-brainer. Ask any senior where they”™d rather live ”“ in Brooklyn or out in the middle of nowhere ”“ and they will tell you Brooklyn every time. They want to get out and see people and have neighbors.”
The breakfast, hosted by the Orange County Citizens Foundation, brought out a host of interested parties. “And that”™s where we need to go ”“ beyond the people in this room, because we know you are all on board,” said Marquette. “We need to get citizens, ordinary people, to find out what they”™re missing: the idea of bringing traditional family-style neighborhoods to our communities.”
While creating cluster housing and leaving open space may appeal to local boards, when it comes to blending generations and creating real liveable communities, the concept is not universally welcomed.
It”™s those people Marquette and Turner hope to turn around, and to that end, they are literally taking the show on the road and encouraging people to read Jay Walisjasper”™s book, “Great Neighborhoods” and visit his website, www.pps.org.
The developer and planner will host tours of several neighboring communities where the concept of blending “new urbanism” and suburbia have worked.
Today”™s mega-malls don”™t seem to have a hard time embracing the concept of something for all, said Marquette. “I don”™t want to think of our communities as a mall, but the concept of creating a place for all age groups in the community to be able to visit and enjoy is the idea. On a recent stop in Ithaca, I found a ”˜destination”™ ”“ Starbucks; that company has made a commercial idea become a destination.” The Lou and Stu Road show hope to expand on that notion.
They are planning visits to four different communities: April 17, Ramsey, N.J.; May 3, Milford, Pa.; May 17, Walden; and May 31, Sugar Loaf.
Ordinary people, NIMBYs, school aged children, business owners, developers, planners, ZBAs and leaders will meet in the host community at a pre-determined spot, walk the neighborhood with a historian, and then go back for coffee to a restaurant to discuss what they liked, and what they didn”™t like. “People can take their own car and make the visit and then continue their day,” said Marquette. The road show in Ramsey and the other three communities will start at 10 a.m. and end around 1 p.m. Four more trips are planned for the balance of 2008 at sites to be determined.
Marquette and Turner will ask three questions of participants:
Ӣ What did you like the most?
Ӣ What did you expect to see but didnӪt?
Ӣ What did you see that would work in your own community?
The goal is to find out what makes a place great, a concern the pair hope to nail down with the help of the Orange County Citizens Foundation, which will be coordinating the effort. The Foundation can be reached at 469-9459 or visit the Web site at www.occfy-ny.org.
“Re-industrializing America might seem a crazy concept ”“ to go back to where we were 100 years ago,” said Marquette. “We need to get rid of the negativism and fear of ”˜what”™s coming.”™ It”™s here.”
Lou Heimbach, Orange County”™s former executive and president of Sterling Forest L.L.C., wished the pair well on their endeavor and gave a few suggestions: “Make a checklist for small, medium and large communities; prioritize those lists and start accomplishing goals. If a garden club has an idea, get merchants involved. That”™s the catalyst.”
