The Triad's Heartbeat
I attended the first of this week's series of charrettes for the Heart of the Triad Monday night.
As the wind and rain whipped up a storm outside, a team of consultants did likewise on the inside, presenting their rough-draft vision for clusters of work and living areas near Piedmont Triad International Airport.
Inspired by such previous efforts as Research Triangle Park, this won't be an easy undertaking, since it will involve such daunting tasks as:
1. Acquiring hundreds of acres of land.
2. Building a mixed-use community on a scale that has never before happened in the Triad.
3. Sustaining momentum for that development over a period of decades.
4. Creating an identity for a place where, currently, "there is no sense of place," in the words of consultant David Taylor.
5. Getting two counties, four cities and six jurisdictions to get along for more than a split second.
6. Remaking our traditional priorities and designing a place where people are more important than automobiles.
7. Achieving public buy-in for it all.
But after a slow start in which some of the audience seemed temporarily lulled into a Power Point trance, the notion seemed to take hold.
Making matters worse is the fact that some of the targeted land is being gobbled up even as I type.
Yup, nobody said this would be easy. But it's exciting, essential and well worth a shot.
It'll be interesting to see what they come up with by week's end.