Old Orchard Beach

I spent all day Saturday in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, volunteering my time at a community design workshop to come up with residents' redevelopment visions for the town's abandoned minor league baseball park. An extremely fulfilling day, although a bit frustrating in a few ways.

Over 100 residents attended the day-long event at the town's high school, and were broken into fourteen groups of 8-9 each to discuss their goals for the land and come up with consensus masterplans. Each team had an architect to offer design advice and an architecture student to act as a facilitator, my job was to be civil engineering "resource rover" and run around to all the teams to answer questions and help out.

Not much was needed in the way of civil engineering advice since the short 5 hour session didn't allow time to get into detail, and that was slightly frustrating. I spent most of my time trying to assist the student facilitators (my fellowship charrette training was a huge benefit) as they tried to keep their teams on track. Some groups started wandering down paths that were interesting but not relevant to the priority of building consensus for a masterplan in a very short period of time, and some groups included very opinionated citizens who dominated the conversation at the expense of the other participants. I found out quickly that wind farms are a hot topic in Old Orchard. It was helpful to not be assigned to any one group, because I could wander and help groups I thought really needed it, but it was also frustrating because I didn't really spend enough time with any one group to feel like I made a connection with anyone.

Here's the required charrette picture showing three hands working on one drawing in order to get it finished before the presentation deadline. One architect and two town residents, who had never done anything like this before, working on the group's consensus vision plan. That sums it all up...a very cool and inspiring moment happening simultaneously in fourteen rooms.


The fourteen groups made back-to-back five minute presentations to the assembled group at the end of the workshop. Two themes emerged - some groups had plans which kept the land as town land, incorporating town buildings, parks, and community buildings, while other groups proposed a mix of housing, retail, office, and parks. Almost every group proposed a community center. One thing was clear - it was incredible how the process produced clear visions from each group in just five hours. I'm looking forward to what the Memphis charrette produces in seven days.

An event like this really exposed the hopes and fears of a small town faced with a great opportunity. There was scattered mistrust of Town officials and more consistent opposition to development, but there were also ambitious plans detailing growth and outlining the aspirations of residents for their town. A work in progress - updates to come.