Homer bulged with 17 new faces giving it an educated critical eye last week as the town played host to a group of landscape architecture graduate students from the University of Washington.
Their reactions to Homer were both enthusiastic for what could be, and critical of the current lack of overall planning and attention to aesthetics.
"Homer is like a Zen garden that hasn't been raked," said student Michael Espenan.
Students spent several days meeting with various community groups, city planners, council members and citizens, trying to absorb as much as possible about the challenges and assets Homer holds.
Those conversations, as well as their own observations from inspecting Homer's streets, trails, businesses and undeveloped land, will result in a report containing several planning tools for the community.
The group will develop several "alternative futures" for Homer, allowing planners to see several options for the town Square area, accompanied by the actions required by the city, such as zoning, that would facilitate the proposals.
Photo by Carey James, Homer News
Photo by Carey James
A group of landscape architecture graduate students from the University of Washington develop several alternative plans that might end up helping to shape Homer's future.
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In addition, students will look at similar communities to Homer that have developed planning codes and guidelines that "aim to establish and preserve community character, including standards that apply to megastores."
At a community forum Saturday, the grad students received plenty of input from Homer residents about the positives and negatives about Homer, and the directions the community was moving.
Kurt Marquardt, a Homer businessman and former city councilman, imparted his views to a subgroup focusing on trails and pedestrian traffic.
"My concern is mostly with sidewalks," Marquardt said. "I would really like to lean on the state and city to see sidewalks."
Many others flocked to groups discussing megastores and the development of the Town Square, a section of land in the center of town owned in part by the Cook Inlet Region, Inc., (see related story, Page One) the city of Homer, and the University of Alaska.
Students asked residents their ideas about integrating some commercial development into the Town Square plans, including a large store such as Fred Meyer as well as clusters of smaller commercial development.
Resident Hope Finkelstein said she didn't see how a large store such as Fred Meyer could fit in to the plans.
"People don't come to Homer to go to Fred Meyer," she said. "People would come for street fairs, festivals, things like that."
Alexandra Star, owner of Smokey Bay Natural Foods, mirrored Finkelstein's comments.
"That's the last piece of undeveloped property in town," Star said. "Why chew it up."
According to student Laura Ballock, there were some advantages, at least on a conceptual level, to running a road through the center of the Town Square land and allowing limited commerce to develop along it.
"It might be that smaller retail could be a draw" to the area, she said, and could bring consumers from the Sterling Highway area into the Pioneer Avenue shopping district.
These and many other ideas flew fast and sometimes furious at the meeting, and at an end of the day discussion, students summarized those who participated as well informed and passionate about the community's development.
Ideas such as a parking area in the middle of Pioneer Avenue, a continuous trail system, more traffic control and the possibility of new planning regulations were recurring themes of the discussions, students said. Fred Meyer's possible move to Homer was not favorably received, and certainly not if it went in the center of town, the students said.
Overall, students were enthusiastic about the project and developing plans that might help the community shape its future.
"Homer is in a really unique position to make qualitative and quantitative decisions about the future of the town," said Espenan. "I think the community has caught itself before it walked off the edge of the cliff. It's very exciting. We rarely get an opportunity to work with a city that is going forward. Instead, it's like Seattle, trying to go back to what it was before."
Espenan said the megastore issue brings up the question of how to find a balance between creating and encouraging competition but limiting how that competition will take form.
The students' plans will be presented at a community forum tentatively scheduled for May 22.
The program was sponsored by the Homer Chamber of Commerce through a city of Homer economic development contract. The Kachemak Heritage Land Trust helped facilitate the project.
Carey James can be reached at cjames@homernews.com.
