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Mayors' Institute Holds First Single-City Institute In Washington, D.C.
JULY 2008 — WASHINGTON — During July 28 & 29, Mayor Adrian Fenty hosted the first Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) Single-City Institute at the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C. Eight nationally renowned urban design experts joined the Mayor’s staff for a 2-day intensive discussion towards the adaptive reuses for 23 decommissioned public school buildings in the District of Columbia.
Harriet Tregoning, Director of the D.C. Office of Planning, presented the institute case study, challenging the expert design resource team members and city staff to think broadly about the possible reuses for a school campus in the Bloomingdale neighborhood, north of the U.S. Captiol Building and immediately north of the newly created North of Massachusetts Avenue (NOMA) district, a growing residential, commercial and retail area. As designers and staff realized the dramatic changes happening adjacent to Bloomingdale, they focused their efforts to create ideas for building reuses that would serve the surrounding community and support the new growth projected for this area of the city.
Resource team members were struck by the school campus’ proximity to the U.S. Capitol Building, the downtown commercial district and its symbolic geographic location, as the true center of the District. Also the team was encouraged by the various types of mass transit available from this location; Amtrak, Metro and bus. With these general conclusions in mind, the resource team members proposed the following redevelopment ideas for these sites, realizing that these design suggestions may be applied also to other decommissioned school buildings:
An arts center for non-profit and for-profit organizations could provide an affordable location to house office and studio spaces, artists-in-residence, and retail outlets for work produced on-site. Several local and national arts partners could contribute to the success of this scheme: Howard University, “Art-O-Matic” and ArtSpace.
A city college extension could provide career training and education for District residents, particularly in the hospitality industry. The proposed career training facility could accommodate an attached hotel, a sustainable energy utility demonstration center and office space, and a non-profit office space that would serve associations representing service industry employees.
A higher educational facility could engage college and universities that have existing programs in the District. Brad Howard, a resource team member from Howard University, was especially excited by this opportunity, as D.C. is home to nearly 80 satellite college and university programs, which students participate in while studying and interning in D.C. The resource team proposed a university center that would provide temporary housing, office space for institutions and non-profits dealing with college internships and volunteer opportunities in D.C., as well as a health and wellness center that could be shared with visiting students and the surrounding community residents.
A green building demonstration center could provide the opportunity to cultivate green jobs and innovative solutions to growing energy needs around the city and region. Resource team member Daniel Bluestone offered the mantra, “preservation is the ultimate green,” when presenting the concept of the D.C. Green 2020 Center, which was modeled similarly to the hospitality training center, providing for exhibition spaces, training classrooms, for-profit office space rentals, and housing, with partnerships from the local gas and electric companies and the Sustainable Energy Utility, as well as environmentally focused non-profit organizations.
This unique session of the Mayors’ Institute programming was the first Single-City Institute conducted, focusing on one city, one mayor and one urban design subject area. Resource team members praised Tregoning and the city’s staff’s forward thinking for the reuse of this campus and the 19 additional decommissioned school buildings. Participants stressed the need for public - private partnerships in all of their design schemes and offered their enthusiasm towards the possibilities the City has to develop revolutionary programming for the identified sites.
MICD is a partnership program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Architectural Foundation, and the United States Conference of Mayors. To date, the program has assisted over 750 mayors in transforming their communities through good urban design. Additional funding has been provided through a generous gift from the Edward W. Rose III Family Fund of the Dallas Foundation and the Bank of America.
For more information on MICD, call 202-463-1930 or go to www.micd.org.
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