Over the next three days, a group of architecture professionals,
teachers and students will put together a new vision for San Juan
Bautista.
Over the next three days, a group of architecture professionals, teachers and students will put together a new vision for San Juan Bautista.
Eight professionals from the Monterey Bay chapter of the American Institute of Architects – as well as students and professors from California Polytechnic Institute, San Luis Obispo – will be lending time to the Mission City today, Saturday and Sunday for a “design charette” about ways to revitalize and improve the downtown.
“This also is a chance for stakeholders to see a new vision, and maybe a more realistic vision,” said architect Allen Robinson, who’s organizing the workshop.
The architects will tour San Juan Bautista today and meet with locals to discuss their needs and concerns, Robinson said. On Saturday, they’ll start digging in and drawing up plans. And on Sunday, the architects will present those plans to the public.
“It’s important to understand what this charette is not,” Robinson said. ‘This is not an exercise to increase people’s property values. It’s an evocative sort of exercise to get people thinking at 50,000 feet.”
City Manager Jan McClintock said the architects’ work, along with the city’s existing historic design guidelines and a yet-to-be-prepared economic development plan, could put the city in “a really good position” to receive state and federal funding for repairs and “face lifts.”
“We want to get some creative ideas about how to revitalize downtown and keep it within its historic ideas and character,” McClintock said.
The AIA has performed similar services for other cities in the past, Robinson said. For example, architects held a similar workshop after downtown Hollister was devastated by the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and Robinson pointed to the multi-use Briggs Building as one idea that became a reality.
“It’s one of those things professionals do to bring up public awareness of what we’re capable of doing,” he said. “We solve problems. We’re not just a bunch of elitist, wine-sipping artists.”
