Can ‘new urbanism’ save Hollister’s downtown?
With Hollister’s downtown continually pressured by big-box
retailers to the north, a concept is emerging that could put more
consumers’ feet on the sidewalks of San Benito Street.
Can ‘new urbanism’ save Hollister’s downtown?
With Hollister’s downtown continually pressured by big-box retailers to the north, a concept is emerging that could put more consumers’ feet on the sidewalks of San Benito Street.
The concept is call “new urbanism,” in which apartments and condos are clustered above retail shops and restaurants, providing for increased foot traffic and a more vibrant downtown core.
“This concept could work in Hollister … (These types of developments) offer higher density and more affordability while historically offering plenty of access to public transportation. If you look at Hollister, as the end of the transit line, imagine what would happen if it was cleared for transit, it would grow in terms of residents, commercial, light and heavy industrial, it makes perfect sense,” said Jeff Pyle, Economic Development Manager for the city of Hollister.
“If you don’t believe that Hollister has room to grow, that’s the thing that is driving it,” he continued. “We haven’t begun to get the picture of how real estate prices are going to cripple us. We need a balance for young and old, rich and poor, we have a danger here if we go off on a certain track – if we say that San Benito County is going to be the place where they only build multi-million dollar developments – we want to have diversity.”
New urbanism is not a new concept, its origins and concepts date back to the 1920s and 30s, when people designed more walkable neighborhoods that utilized space. It was totally common for towns to have a town square and walkable neighborhoods.
Then the pattern began to change with the emergence of modern architecture, zoning and the ascension of the automobile with the ability of inexpensive gasoline.
New Urbanism is an urban design movement whose popularity increased in the 1980s and especially the 1990s, Pyle said. The goal of new urbanism is to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning including everything from urban retrofits to suburban sprawl.
After World War II, a new system of development was implemented nationwide, replacing neighborhoods with a rigorous separation of uses that has become known as conventional suburban development, or sprawl. The majority of U.S. citizens now live in suburban communities built in the last 50 years.
Although conventional suburban development has been popular, it carries a significant price. Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, conventional suburban development spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as a population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for the great majority of household and commuter trips.
New Urbanism is a reaction to sprawl. For a growing movement of architects, planners and developers, new urbanism is based on principles of planning and architecture that work together to create human-scale, walkable communities.
Local architect and planning commission David Huboi said that as a planner it absolutely makes him cringe to see a big-box store surrounded by asphalt. He said that his work in the San Jose area during the 1990s exposed him to urban decay and the problems that come with it. He said that when it was time for him to choose a place for his family to live, he chose elsewhere. At that time people were leaving urban areas because they couldn’t afford to live there. Developers needed to create incentives.
New urbanists take a wide variety of approaches-some work exclusively on infill projects, others focus on transit-oriented development, still others are attempting to transform the suburbs, and many are working in all of these categories.
New urbanism includes traditional architects and those with modernist sensibilities. All, however, believe in the power and ability of traditional neighborhoods – those neighborhoods that are self-sufficient and include all the amenities that one would normally have to travel outside the neighborhood for; dry cleaner, laundry mat, restaurants, etc. – to restore functional, sustainable communities.
One of the key concepts of the movement is design to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs.
“Interaction, activity and vitality are all key concepts to this type of development. By creating projects like this you naturally inject integration of use and diversity. Thus you create an area that is healthier and easier on the environment,” Huboi said.
Gilroy has been developing mixed-use projects for several years, according to Gary Walton, president of Custom One, a real estate development company in Gilroy that is developing a mixed use project, including the new building that will house the Gilroy Garlic Festival headquarters.
“Projects like these are often more difficult than standard developments because there are different codes with mixed-use developments. But there are benefits. For one you’re recycling the land and creating more vitality by mixing uses and creating housing for people who don’t want a 7,000 square-foot home,” Walton said.
In Gilroy, the planners worked with developers to get projects moving, Walton said. Together they set up a plan that addresses mixed-use developments. As a result, several mixed-use downtown developments have been built and others are in planning stages.
One of the ways Gilroy enticed developers to build more mixed-use developments was by offering fee waivers. Walton said that the waivers enticed developers to start talking about how they could develop downtown.
“Often 80 percent to90 percent of that was just talk, but it has attracted a lot of developers. I can think of maybe four to eight projects that have been done,” Walton said. “At the end of the year the fee waiver expires and if they don’t renew it I don’t think you’ll see as much movement. It’s important for the city to stay involved. The fee waivers don’t make a huge difference, but it helps. Plus there is an economic benefit to having people downtown.”
When people live next to businesses there is more potential for socialization. They’ll go read a book at the coffee shop or have a drink at the neighborhood bar.
Really though, what some might call “new” urbanism, others just see as good basic community planning; planning more than one block at a time, Pyle said.
