Designing a new future

SANDPOINT — The three design teams selected as part of the city's waterfront design competition were introduced to the community this week.

Representatives from the teams selected for the second phase — First Forty Feet, GGLO and Bernardo Wills, and Skylab — introduced themselves, their teams and their general approach at a special "Meet Your Designers" event Wednesday.

Partnering with First Forty Feet are Greenworks, Fehr & Peers, Century West Engineering and North Root Architecture. Partnering with GGLO and Bernardo Wills are Welch Comer, Greg Moller, Erin Blue and Sarah Thompson Moore. Partnering with Skylab are PLACE, KPFF, PAE & LUMA, Brightworks and ECONorthwest.

The three firms were selected from eight firms from throughout the country — and across the world with some teams fielding an international component as well, competition manager Don Stastny said.

Created to help the city combine multiple working master plans for the downtown area into one master document, city officials said the design competition provides an opportunity to gain a new design perspective on how the properties should be handled, with an emphasis on its waterfront area and City Beach.

The competition is done in three phases. Stage 1 began with an open call out to potential design teams, who were required to submit portfolios based on the criteria outlined in the manual. The eight teams who heard the call had their portfolios checked for compliance, by a group of residents and industry experts who select the design teams that are moving on to the second stage.

All of the teams — especially the three selected to move forward in the second phase — are all strong teams.

"There wasn't a loser in the bunch," Stastny said. "I mean, any one of them could have taken on this project and done an excellent job for us. So it's really just finding the best of the best."

Each of the teams has a strong local element in addition to a diverse range of disciplines, from community design and placemaking to architects, ecologists and engineers.

City and competition officials will meet with the teams mid-way through the project to see where they are at, and what information they might need. It's a chance for the teams to ask questions and get additional information, Stastny said.

The teams will then present their overall final concepts sometime in late May to the city's technical advisory group.

The concepts will then be presented to the Sandpoint City Council — and the community — as well as posted online. Throughout the process, Stastny said the public will have a chance to comment and share thoughts.

"This is a plan for the people, for the community," he told those gathered. "And we hope that through the process, we'll be able to tie a lot of these different efforts that have been going on within the city together to the point that it will serve as kind of a blueprint or a roadmap for how to go forward for the next number of years to maintain the community to maintain the values of the community and being able to do it in a constructive fashion."

Stastny welcomed several dozen community residents to the event, noting it marks the start of the second phase of the project. He told those gathered he was excited to be a part of the city's design competition, noting it's one of more than 70 he has been involved in over the years.

"What we bring to this is an understanding about how you build cities, how you build community, and how you put together processes that are transparent, and allow the community to participate in it as well as being an observer on the side," he said.

As he outlined the competition, Stastny said the process is set up to engage the public and seek input from the community in a structured way. It is also set up to ensure each of the three teams is treated equally, and give them the same information — then turn them loose to draft a vision that solves the challenges outlined in the city's competition design manual.

Talking to people is "sort of our thing," Will Grimm of First Forty Feet said, noting that he and his team have already started the process of talking to the community about their hopes and goals.

Joking that, despite its name, First Forty Feet was not a shoe company, Grimm said the firm's name represents its vision — that the most important space in a community is the first 40 feet up a building and out into the street. That space is where you experience a community, whether it is your hometown or your favorite place to visit.

"That space, that dimension, is really important," Grimm said. "And to get that right, you have to zoom out and understand the layers. And in this case, there are many and a lot of challenges and a lot of issues here. So to get this right, you have to understand the big picture."

Grimm said the team, filled with extroverts who love to talk to communities, is centered around people and public life and the spaces in between. It features multiple disciplines so that they can tackle the many challenges the community is facing and create something special.

"We are many things and that's important to know and to have because that's how communities are," Grimm said. "They're complex."

Projects they have worked on can be found throughout the Northwest, from Lewiston to Portland to the Kenai River Peninsula in Alaska. They all connect people and downtowns to the water in a way that celebrates each component.

The realm where cities and nature meets is where you'll find GGLO and Bernardo Wills, Mark Sindell said. What his team specializes in is doing so poetically instead of in a collision, which often happens.

A combination of science and visionary thinkers, Sindell said the team works to integrate cities and nature that brings life to a community. In the design manual, he said a comment that struck the team was that nature was a visual defining characteristic of the area — attracting both new visitors and residents.

"So back to nature, let's respect it, let's restore it, and let's bring it forward," Sindell said. "Too often in these projects, it's the last thing that's considered; we want it to be the first thing that's considered."

That, he said, is the team's approach to community design. It's a matter of understanding a community's unique culture and environment and bringing it forward to today. It's a matter of being partners with the community and working in collaboration to address the challenges faced by the community.

"Part of that is being of the community," Sindell said. "So an exploration of that, in our approach, and you're all partners in this, is being grounded in place, and creating something visionary, yet achievable. So we have to be visionary."

The projects they have done, which can be found throughout Idaho, the Pacific Northwest and the West Coast, work to perpetuate culture and identity, instead of diminishing it. In Sandpoint, it would be a matter of building upon the lake as being the community's lakefront living room.

"We don't think beauty and environment and creativity and economic catalysts are at odds with each other; they all should work together," he added.

A fan of the community since he discovered it during a road trip in the mid-1990s as an avid skier and mountain biker, Skylab's Jeff Kovel said that love of the community drew him to Schweitzer's Humbird project. As part of that project, his team was able to take what was seen by visitors as a disjointed mountain village with no identity into something that is filled with character and community.

Like the other teams, Kovel said Skylab and its partners are an interdisciplinary team filled with a diverse range of skill sets that will allow them to address what they prefer to call opportunities facing the community.

From projects throughout the Northwest, including Luuwit Park and Zidell Yards in Portland, Ore., to a large-scale design studio for Nike, Novel said that in each project, Skylab works to weave together a community's storytelling and identity and its goals into a comprehensive picture.

"We'd like to really have a sort of eclectic mix of ingredients in our work that's developed through research and not sort of preconceived in terms of the outcome," he added. "We like to say that we reveal the unseen for those willing to seek it, meaning that we're really looking to find those epiphanies, those sort of hidden attributes in a place or an opportunity and, and reveal them through the act of design. And the only way we can do that is with really great relationships with active partners — and so we see our clients and in this case, community, as a really vital partner in that process."

The process begins with research and engagement as the team digs into the "knotted ball of yarn" that has been created over time by those opportunities. He likened the process to a negotiation and collaborative process, based on feedback and information gathered as part of its research.

"Creating a place for everyone at the table is really important," Skylab team member Reiko Igarashi said. "And we'll continue to set that table through this process and invite all of you there."