Tracking Town Squares/Urban Villages/etc. everywhere

[CTroyMathis]

In other words, starting to lose count of all the various types and sizes of ex-urban town square/quasi-urban villages and if this one has yet to be mentioned.

Here it is... some news anyway, in McKinney


European flair: Developer plans to create village
BRENDA BERNET 11/13/2003
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10509389&BRD=1436&PAG=461&dept_id=184990&rfi=6



The project would include three-story buildings with restaurants and retailers on the first floor, and offices and residences on the second and third floor, in a manner that complements a lake at the south end of the property.
"I want to build a village," he said.
The Planning and Zoning Commission voted 4-2 Tuesday to recommend a request from Blackard to change the allowed use of 45 acres in Stonebridge Ranch from a planned development for retail to a planned development for residential, retail, office and civic uses.
An information meeting about the project is also scheduled from 7-9 p.m. today at Dowell Middle School, 301 Ridge Road.
The proposed development includes a nine-acre villa district, with high-quality detached and attached single family houses, with 79 total dwelling units, according to a draft zoning ordinance submitted by Blackard Developments.
The villa district could also include townhomes, duplexes and parks and recreation areas.
The second portion of the development is a 36-acre town center district with a mix of compatible retail, office and attached residential uses, including a maximum of 450 multifamily units, which Blackard described as flats.
The town center could include hotels, professional offices, senior residential facilities, retailers, hospitals, professional medical offices and a public meeting area, such as a community center, according to the draft ordinance.
Retail and office space is proposed to occupy 90 percent of the ground floor space of buildings that contain 50 residential units.
Comments made during a public hearing were mostly in favor of the proposed project. Residents said the project looked marvelous, that they would rather look at townhomes instead of the back of a large grocery or department store and that it offers the city something different.
Steve Johnson, president of the Stonebridge Area Action Committee, a group of homeowners, said he has heard comments varying from rezoning the property to single family or to leaving it commercial. Most have agreed to support Blackard's proposed project, Johnson said.
"Our biggest fear is a large, freestanding apartment building," he said. "We bought into the concept of the residential units being intermingled with commercial."
Residents worked with Blackard to cap the number of multifamily units at 450 and to insure that they will be mixed with commercial, he said.
"We bought the pretty picture, and that is what we want to see built," he said.
Stonebridge area resident Larry Wright, whose property sits across a lake from the proposed project, said a European style village will give McKinney an edge over other commuities.
"This is by far the best, most exciting vision," said Larry Wright, whose house sits across a lake from the development. "To put straight commercial there would be such a waste of this piece of property."
Cindy Evans, who also lives in Stonebridge, said she is excited about the concept of a European village. The vision Blackard portrays is nice, but details in the proposal seem different that what has been promised, she said.
"My issue has been with putting it all in writing," she said.
She is also concerned about the multifamily units, and so were some commissioners.
Commissioner George Brewer said he could not support the zoning request, primarily because of the multifamily aspect of the project.
"My major concern is the multifamily policy the City Council adopted in August of 2001," he said, adding that two multifamily complexes are located near the proposed development. "My other problem is MISD. We're putting a big burden on the school district without the revenue coming in, especially with a multifamily project."
But, the development is expected to attract visitors to Stonebridge Ranch, just like restaurants bring visitors to the city's historic downtown, said Commissioner Don Day, who voted in support of the zoning change.
"It brings more people," he said.
But some commissioners are concerned about the impact of the multifamily components of the development. The number of multifamily units has changed several times since planning began for the village, at first the planned included more. But Blackard and Stonebridge Ranch homeowners finally agreed upon 450.
"There is no magic number," he said. "It's about creating a village with people in it."
City staff members explained that the project lacks conformance with the city's multifamily policy and with the city's future comprehensive land use plan, which is being developed.
The city's multifamily policy states that the city's six sectors should be composed of no more than 10 percent multifamily. The area of the proposed project has 21 percent, said Jennifer Lorance, city planner. The future land use plan designates that area for retail only.
After two tie votes, with Commissioner Herb Trenham not voting due to a conflict of interest, staff explain the commissioner could not use a tie vote to make a recommendation.
Commissioners Bill Cox, Day and Eric Zepp favored the project, while Commissioners Brewer, Flo Henry and Travis Ussery voted against the project. Then, the commission took a brief break.
Once the meeting resumed, Brian James, director of planning for the city, said the commission, as an advisory body, had to come up with a recommendation, either in favor or against the proposed zoning change.
Blackard is proposing to build residential units at the same time as commercial units are built. Initially, he proposed to build 20,000 square feet of commercial with the first 100 multifamily units, 40,000 square feet of commercial with the second 100 multifamily units, 30,000 square feet of commercial with the third set of 100 multifamily units and 30,000 square feet with the last set of 150 multifamily units, according to the draft ordinance.
After Blackard agreed to build 30,000 square feet of commercial with the first 100 multifamily units and 20,000 square feet of commercial with the last 150 multifamily units, Ussery changed his vote, making it 4-2.
"I make this change with respect to city policy," he said.

[CTroyMathis]

Here's some more project/planning/design stuff from Mesa Design's site:
http://www.mesadesigngroup.com/projects.html
Company located @3100 McKinnon.


*Fairview CBD
*Downtown Waxahachie
*Some little DeSoto plan
*Looks like they have some hand in the Wildflower gig in Grand Prairie
*Prosper plan
*Kidd Springs Park final master plan for Oak Cliff in Dallas
*DFW Master Plan
*Victory
*Dallas Farmers Market District

[CTroyMathis]

Part of Stonebridge (http://www.stonebridgeranch.com/default.asp) plan gets go-ahead
Council rezones 8 acres for village project; fate of 37 acres unsettled

07:06 AM CST on Wednesday, December 17, 2003
By PAUL MEYER / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/collin/news/stories/121703dnccomccouncil.ae6cae4e.html

McKINNEY – A Frisco developer's bid to build a faux Croatian village at the center of Stonebridge Ranch won limited approval Tuesday after more than a month of discussion about the fate of one of North Texas' largest master planned communities...

[freewaytincan]

Ahh..."Fairview: Keepin' it Country!"

Bullock.

[CTroyMathis]

Town Center comes under fire
By Penny Rathbun , Staff writer 02/26/2004
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11031685&BRD=1426&PAG=461&dept_id=528191&rfi=6

Celina Mayor Corbett Howard said he appreciated the turnout at Monday's meeting. After all, a Town Center concept needs review and approval.

About 65 people attended the meeting organized by Bob McKnight and held at the First State Bank on the square. It began a half-hour before the specially called city council meeting at city hall.

McKnight, who is CEO of the First State Bank, organized the meeting to inform people about the city's proposed Town Center Concept Plan. He invited Mayor Corbett Howard to speak.

"I appreciate the turnout," said Howard. He outlined how the vision committee was appointed last summer and met this fall over a seven-to eight-week period to determine how they would like Celina to look in 30 years.

"We need citizen input," he said. There are two public hearings before the final rendering of council. Nothing is set in concrete."

Two members of the vision committee were present, Carolyn Harvey and Mark Peterman. Both said they participated in developing the vision document, but had not taken part in the concept plan.

Peterman said he supported the vision document developed by the vision committee.

"My heartburn with this is it's about 15 years too early."

He encouraged people to look through it. "There are details we didn't have anything to do with. What I would encourage you to do is go through the document and see if there's something there you like. We're putting the cart before the horse. That's why I'm here. I'm ag'in it."

The Town Center concept plan divides the downtown area into five districts and requires that any new structures built in the downtown area be built in the architectural styles current between 1890 and the 1930s.

According to McKnight's interpretation of the plan, it calls for a more complicated and time-consuming process to make any improvements or changes on downtown buildings.

Zoning changes call for mixed uses along the railroad track and could include structures with businesses on the ground floor and residences above the businesses. McKnight said it will be years before the city is ready for those kinds of buildings along the railroad tracks.

"I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood what could happen if the zoning changed. I am concerned about the downtown area. We already have ordinances that would take care of some of these issues," said McKnight.

Celina resident Stan Goodell had harsher words for the plan. "I've been fighting this for the last three months at city hall. This document is the biggest bunch of idiocy I've ever seen in my life.

"The only way to get this stuff at city hall stopped is to change the council," he added.

McKnight said he organized the meeting because he wanted people to be informed. "People can do something. They need to take an interest is all they need to do. They can make a difference."

The dates of the two public hearings for the town center concept plan have not been set yet, but they will likely occur in March.

[Dallas]

These town squares are basically suburban strip malls without the typical strip mall look. Masking up a suburban strip mall doesnt make it a downtown.

[gc]

Perfect Town, USA
Frisco wants to lure Andy and Opie with a Starbucks. Why is that an evil plan?
BY ZAC CRAIN - zac.crain@dallasobserver.com

Four decades of James Bond films have proven that I must die now. Ive seen all the secret plans, uncovered facts and figures. I now know how the evil geniuses in Frisco plan to take over the world; i.e., I know too much. So this is where the needlessly complicated murder attempt comes in. Maybe something involving a laser beam, or a shark tank. I have five minutes, at the most, to plan my escape, and Im not even wearing a tuxedo.
Luckily, my host for the day is not a megalomaniacal supervillain of indeterminate ethnicity, harboring a grudge and possibly a few WMDs. (I dont think.) Its an attractive woman named Debby.

Truth is, theres no scheme to take over the world by Five Star Development, the company Debby Hanson works for as director of marketing. North Texas, maybe.

Hanson is merely showing me around Frisco Square, Five Stars newest, most ambitious development, mixed-use and multigenerational. Five Star already has developed one town square project in Flower Mound, Parker Square, and several more have sprouted up in bedroom communities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the past few years, most notably Southlake Town Square. But Frisco Square--the company line goes--is bigger and better than the others, less about quality of retail than quality of life. Though, of course, quality of retail is still very important.

They might be right. Frisco Square is located just beyond where the Dallas North Tollway meets state Highway 121, a 4 million-square-foot community full of pretty parks and tree-lined streets with garden medians, stores that were meant for window shopping and the best restaurants around. Not to mention gorgeous townhomes and the kind of turn-of-the-century architecture that makes men want to wear bowties and fedoras. Frisco's new city hall is there as well, near the church and library, giving it the anchor a real old-fashioned town square needs. And the town square--like the newborn ones in Southlake and Flower Mound--gives the city a sense of history and identity it lacks, even though Frisco is 100 years old.

Frisco Square is literally and metaphorically a Five Star Development, a pedestrian-friendly plot of heaven you'd never have to leave unless you wanted to. But you probably wouldn't want to, especially since there's a concierge on-site to cater to your every whim.

Despite my initial fear of the project's too-good-to-be-true intentions (this perfect suburban development eerily mimics Cypress Creek, run by the evil mastermind Scorpio in a famous episode of The Simpsons), it's clear the only danger is that another generation of boys might be saddled with the name Opie. The most convoluted assassination attempt here is the three-hour checkers tournament at the senior center.

The tour doesn't take very long because, right now, Frisco Square fits very comfortably on a table in a leasing office and on a map on the wall. You can walk the entire thing in 10, maybe 15 seconds. Step outside that leasing office, and it's difficult to take in the scope of the project, to buy what Five Star is selling.

Because there's not much here at the moment. There are a few four-story buildings that eventually will house all kinds of retail and office tenants, with apartments above them. (A few of them have moved in already.) The first phase of townhomes is ready and waiting, and some have even been sold. The aforementioned senior center recently opened on the premises. Everything else is under construction or still on the map.

"Truly this is an urban environment," Hanson says. "It's nothing like anyone in this part of the country will know. We have a lot of people from Chicago and New York who are here. They come in and get the concept immediately. But, you know, to us suburbanites who drive everywhere, it's just a completely different concept to them." She opens up another map of the site so her visitor can see what she means, pointing to make her points. "But we really want people to feel like, you know, we want you to live down here, and your office is up here, and you'll be able to walk on the way home and check out a book at the library and sit in Frisco Square on a Thursday night and listen to live jazz...Our owner is absolutely committed to building something that is a legacy for not only his kids, but their kids and their kids."

It sounds great. Exactly the kind of small-town environment everyone involved with Frisco and Frisco Square immediately tries to conjure up when talking about the project. Reality is eight years away. It could be as many as 12. It also may never come. During its rise from sleepy suburb to Plano-sized player--with a gigantic mall, two huge sports complexes and a prodigious convention center either already there or coming soon--Frisco already may become too much of a big city to be a small town again. In 12 years, Frisco Square may be just another strip mall. You could say the same for Southlake Town Square and Parker Square.

"These kind of semi-self-contained communities are often pitched as a solution to sprawl, and I think they're really more examples of sprawl," says writer Alex Marshall, whose book How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken was published in 2001. He's written about, well, how cities work for the past decade. "And they tend to be kind of Trojan horses, where they allow sprawl to get in the doorway under different names.

"They also, I think, really don't work just on their own terms. They're pitched as kind of having a lot of attributes that people like about older urban communities or smaller towns. But they tend to really not function that differently than typical, conventional subdivisions...They basically just add to the problem of too much development spread out over too large of an area and too much dependence on highways. They're really more like fashion statements than a real solution to sprawl."

If sprawl is evil, then the next few years will determine if Frisco will become just another suburban villain or something unique and worthwhile: a force for good. It will determine who is telling the truth: naysayers like Marshall or people like Cole McDowell, the president of Five Star, and David M. Schwarz, the architectural vision behind the projects in Frisco, Southlake and Flower Mound, as well as the man responsible for The Ballpark at Arlington, the American Airlines Center and Bass Performance Hall, to name a few. They argue that the traditional values represented in Schwarz's past-perfect architectural nostalgia can permeate and shape an entire community, that the design of a community can influence its behavior.

There is already some evidence--Celebration, Disney's much-criticized attempt at city building in Florida that was the model for The Simpsons' Cypress Creek--that it can't. But if Schwarz and McDowell are right, the city of the future just might be the city of the past. If Marshall is, well, at least there will be a new batch of strip malls that look really pretty.
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If you want to get an idea of what Frisco Square will be, drive 30 minutes west on state Highway 121 to Flower Mound, to Parker Square. That will do for now, says Dana Baird-Hanks, Frisco's director of communications, who understates that "it's kind of comparable" to the project in Frisco.

Stand at Parker Square's front entryway and you'll see a living, breathing brochure for Frisco Square. There are no townhomes, but just about everything else is here. From this angle, it really does look like a picture postcard of what most cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area want to be, missing only a "Wish you were here!" banner hovering just above the rooftops. Just forget that you had to drive through three miles of failed ambition in Lewisville to get here.
Straight ahead, streetlights lead the way like a trail of bread crumbs past two-story buildings housing office and retail space to the solid, stolid Chamber of Commerce building, basking in the sunlight as though it's just waiting for someone to pick up the key to the city. Off to the right, a copper dome with a clock tower stands sentry over the ad hoc downtown. To the left, in the middle of an emerald green lawn, is the kind of gazebo Thornton Wilder wrote plays about. Today, a mom and grandma push a baby in a stroller while another youngster toddles along behind them. Nothing evil about it.

No detail has gone overlooked: David M. Schwarz's designs were meant to invoke the kind of old-fashioned downtown Flower Mound never had, and they do so to an almost fetishistic degree. Brick crosswalks meet you at every intersection, and scattered throughout Parker Square are benches where you can sit and visit for a spell. Vintage-looking fixtures adorn every building, each one constructed with varied brick styles and patterns, as though each had a separate birth. The illusion is that Parker Square grew organically over a few decades. Since it's so freshly scrubbed and new, the criticism often leveled against Schwarz's work--that it's more of a stage set than a town--carries some weight.

But Schwarz's style is exactly what Cole McDowell wanted when he hired Schwarz to design Parker Square. The president of Five Star Development and a Flower Mound resident, McDowell wanted to create a focal point for his community, give it a place to build a sense of history around...and to buy a pair of pants, maybe a nice plate of enchiladas. Build it and they will come and all of that. Flower Mound didn't have much else in that regard, since it was incorporated in 1961 and only recently had to think about what it wants to be when it grows up.

"These suburban communities that were little farm towns 30 years ago have been overrun by housing and land development," McDowell says. He founded Five Star in 1997 after spending the previous 15 years in real estate, building more than 1,000 single-family homes. "In most cases, the city planners and councils have not planned for a downtown. And so they're left with no image except a major intersection with grocery stores on each corner."

In short, he wanted the kind of town square that doesn't really exist anymore, even in places where it sort of does. Look at McKinney. Its old-fashioned town square is essentially a tombstone for the way of life McDowell talks about. The old courthouse, reconstructed in 1927 and currently being reconstructed again as a community arts center set to open in fall 2005, is surrounded on all sides by a dozen antique stores. Yes, there are tree-lined streets, brick crosswalks, office space and retail, restaurants and soda fountains. But they only reinforce the musty, antique atmosphere of the place. The McKinney Community Development Corp. is trying to resurrect the district, but it might be merely giving a face-lift to a corpse. As the low-rider truck pumping 2Pac proves, this is a different time in McKinney.

In Flower Mound, Parker Square pretends it isn't. Since it opened in 1999, Parker Square has given Flower Mound both tradition and traditional retail. Its Holiday Stroll on the Square events--with Christmas carolers in Victorian getups, Dickens plays being staged at the gazebo and over-the-top lighting displays by area businesses--bring in just about everyone in the city. Judging by today's turnout, the restaurants and retail keep them coming back throughout the year. Why wouldn't they? At just past noon on a lazy Friday in March, the sky is blue, the grass is green, the air is cool and the shopping is fabulous.

"It's been a great benefit for the community," says Jim Lang, Flower Mound's director of economic development. "I mean, everybody loves it."

Still, there's something about the place that feels artificial, and it's not necessarily the fiberglass benches that dot the terrain. It's not the parking lot filled to the brim with so many Explorers and jacked-up Lexuses that it comes across as either a playground for bored soccer moms or an SUV dealership. It's not the fact that one of the first businesses you see upon arriving is a laser skin center, the bread and butter of most strip malls. It's not even the multiple signs that warn: "No bikes, skateboards or roller blades," sucking the fun out of the place.

It's that, just down the street, seemingly in polar opposition to what's going on at Parker Square and everything Schwarz and McDowell believe in, there is The Highlands of Flower Mound, a well-to-do strip center that opened in February and is anchored by a Super Target. Across the street from The Highlands, another big commercial development is planned: Highlands Ranch, a 34-acre shopping center built around a Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, a Western-themed spot complete with cattle guards and stone-strewn streams. Both projects will add 1 million square feet of commercial retail to the area and continue the big-box retail trend that projects like Parker Square supposedly should curb. It's clear from this that though Flower Mound's city planners appreciate Parker Square, it's not exactly what they're developing their city around. It's just another shopping center.

"We like to encourage the special projects that bring high quality," Lang says. "But that's a very general statement. I mean, you have to really look at each thing coming up...I hesitate to make that general statement, because then it sounds like, you know, we don't want Outback Steakhouse. Well, we do, actually."



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It's a mess, really, if you look at it on paper. Even if you look at it in person. The attempts by Frisco's planners and developers to give the new-old city an identity and, just as important, a healthy tax base sound great. Individually. But when you put them together they don't quite fit, as though someone mixed up two boxes of jigsaw puzzle pieces, or stuck a white picket fence around Deep Ellum.
Think about it: A couple of miles away from Frisco Square is the Stonebriar Centre, the biggest, most active mall in North Texas. It's arguably a city unto itself, especially when you factor in all of the ancillary developments that have emerged in its shadow. Next door is a $300 million sports complex that includes the Dr Pepper/Seven Up Ballpark (the David M. Schwarz-designed home of the Texas Rangers' Double-A affiliate the Frisco RoughRiders) and the Dr Pepper StarCenter (home of the Texas Tornado, a Junior League hockey team, and a training facility for the Dallas Stars). Just up the road is a 115,000-square-foot convention center ready to go in April 2005. And just across Main Street from Frisco Square, the Dallas Burn's new stadium and soccer complex (with 17 additional fields) is set to open next year.

This doesn't even include the new hotels and office parks that are in the works, or the extension to the tollway that will open now that the state Highway 121 interchange is complete. Or, for that matter, Frisco Square.

When it is all said and done, an almost entirely new city will stand just to the left of where the old one used to be, and it'll be as big and powerful as any city, outside of Dallas and Fort Worth, in North Texas. Which will make it tough to maintain a small-town environment while incorporating the amenities of a big city, the stated goal of Frisco Square. "We laugh because a lot of people used to consider 121 sort of the edge of the earth," Hanson says. Frisco Square alone will be "one-third the size of downtown Fort Worth," she adds. "You know, it's huge."

This big, ambitious development had its serendipitous birth in the late 1990s. McDowell had started working on a residential development in Frisco; about the same time, the city was trying to decide what it wanted to do with the acreage it had bought and earmarked for its new city hall, how it possibly could lay out a new downtown around the building. City Manager George Purefoy served as a bridge between the separate projects. He had seen what was going on in Southlake and Flower Mound, and he thought something similar would work in Frisco. Together with city planning director John Lettellier, they began preliminary discussions. Eventually, Schwarz was brought in to start working on development standards and site layouts. All of this was strongly encouraged by then-Mayor Kathy Seei.

"The mayor looked at [the sprawl and overdone residential developments] happening in Plano and said, 'I don't want this to happen to Frisco. I want my town to develop differently. And I want to keep some of the values of the original place,'" Schwarz says.
Lettellier agreed. He'd been a city planner in Plano and knew the potential pitfalls that lay ahead for the growing city, how explosive growth can have explosive results. After more than a year of meetings, the concept of Frisco Square was born. Lettellier and the various city offices set about the task of figuring out how they wanted to raise it.

"They were open to the concept of traditional town development--new urbanism. They saw the value in it," Lettellier says of the city council and zoning and planning commissions. "They saw what's happening in Southlake. We visited Celebration in Florida, did a lot of research from these type of developments, and the city was very comfortable in trying to do something like that."

In November 2001, the city officially broke ground on Frisco Square, the $600 million, 4 million-square-foot development that will contain all of the city's offices, as well as a library, church, police station, senior center and dozens of parks and gardens, plus high-end apartments and townhomes. Schwarz came up with the master plan and is designing some of the buildings. With Frisco growing at an exponential rate--according to the U.S. Census, it's the fastest-growing city in Texas and one of the fastest-growing in the country--McDowell's plan was for the 100-year-old city to start fresh. With so many new faces in Frisco, it was a fine time to try, and Frisco Square is the right place to do it.

"The vision is about building community pride and a sense of place," McDowell says. "I believe in building more than just financially viable office and retail developments. If you create the density and project tenant mix that keeps people from retreating to their cars to go to lunch or the dry cleaners, if you provide a venue for people to gather together for special events, then you get to know your neighbors. That's how you create community."

Celebration, the "city" Disney opened for business in 1996, tried the same thing. A residential development 30 miles outside downtown Orlando, Celebration was designed to mirror a pre-World War II small town. It was to be a model for how a town should work, where people knew their neighbors and everything was in walking distance: stores, city services, entertainment, whatever. It would be racially and financially diverse, less a community than another Magic Kingdom.

Celebration turned out to be as white as a sheet of paper and just about as blank. Residents didn't sit on their front porches visiting with neighbors; they sat inside watching television. People still used their cars because they had to: The stores on Market Street seemed to cater more to tourists than to Celebration's citizens. The city was too insulated, and Disney and the "town fathers"--the city's informal leadership committee--were too controlling. As Bill Potts, a retired home builder and father of one of Celebration's disgruntled residents, says at the end of Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney's Brave New Town, Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins' 1999 book documenting the community's first three years: "[Disney] may be able to build an amusement park, but they can't build a town." A sense of community developed in Celebration, but it was in spite of the town's planners, not because of them. The same thing could happen to Frisco Square, says writer Alex Marshall.

"Because they're built around the car and they really have to be for people to have access to them, then the normal routine of daily life really doesn't change very much usually," Marshall says. "People usually still have to drive to get to the supermarket. It's very difficult to get any kind of commerce going in these places, because for a store to work, they need exposure to traffic. So, you can't have a town square in the middle of a subdivision be successful commercially. You just don't have the density. You don't have enough traffic, so they tend to be problematic.

"The neo-traditional subdivisions outside of town...I'm pretty skeptical of," he continues. "They tend to say that they are a return to traditional small towns, but I think it's kind of fake. Traditional small towns don't stand for exclusivity or privatization. These subdivisions, they're typically governed by a homeowners' association. That's not a real town; that's a private real estate venture. Basically, they tend to be just another subdivision, but they tend to try to hide that."

Frisco Square is managed by a homeowners' association; it's a selling point, in fact, a way to attract people who want the maintenance-free lifestyle the homeowners' association will ensure. And Frisco Square's price structure naturally guarantees exclusivity: The homes range from 2,900 to 4,200 square feet with prices as high as $500,000. The apartments aren't much cheaper, and with their granite countertops and high-end fixtures, they can't be. Lower-price-point homes are next on the agenda, Hanson says, but don't expect them to be that much lower.

So you won't have to worry about who's living next door to you at Frisco Square. They'll be well-off, upper-middle to lower-upper, just like you. They might even make good neighbors. And McDowell may yet succeed at building a community where he's building his development. Most likely not the one he's selling.



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If you want an even better idea of what Frisco Square eventually will be, get back on state Highway 121 and drive another 30 minutes west and south, and you'll end up in Southlake. This is where the model for mixed-use developments exists. Literally. Southlake Town Square is on the cover of the Urban Land Institute's Mixed-Use Development Handbook, a how-to guide for city planners.
It's not Frisco Square, either. Not exactly, not yet. But it's closer to it than Parker Square is: After a protracted dispute with the city and some of its residents, Cooper & Stebbins--the project's developer--is building its first phase of 29 brownstones around Southlake Town Square (35 people are on the waiting list to buy one), with a second phase of 39 following soon after. The number eventually will be 155.

Once the new homes are in place, the development will be much more comparable to Frisco Square, the kind of place where, ideally, you can live, work, shop and play. Right now, three out of four ain't bad.

On a Friday afternoon, Southlake Town Square looks exactly like the photo on the cover of ULI's handbook. The imposing columns of Southlake's red-brick courthouse overlook a cozy park with a pair of fountains and dozens of children at play. A grandmother and her grandson share a snowcone. Another kid shares a scoop of ice cream with his shirt. The demographics are perfect--multiple ages, races, the whole bit.

More so than Parker Square, Southlake Town Square is a real mall, only with a courthouse as the main anchor store. Tenants include The Gap, Eddie Bauer, Bath & Body Works, Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel and, of course, a Starbucks. It's slightly upscale, but then, so is Southlake. It's as though someone chopped the top off NorthPark and made it a convertible.

Once again, Schwarz's hand is evident right away: another mess of nostalgic storefronts, separate but equal, different but the same. This is what suburban cities look like, if you forget 60 years of history. Or that none of this was here a decade ago.
Today, it's bustling. You have to circle a bit to find a parking space, and even then, you have to engage in a bit of defensive driving to get it. When you circle, however, the most distressing aspect of Southlake Town Square pops up: The development already has an adjacent strip center, a one-story complex around back called The West Side District. Euphemisms aside, it's a strip mall. But whatever.

"For Southlake it creates a downtown core that we did not have," says Greg Last, the city's director of economic development. Since it opened in 1999, he's given tours to city leaders from all over the country, most recently the mayor of San Antonio. "In order to hold a homecoming parade, we had to go to Grapevine and borrow Main Street. When Town Square was finished, they had their first homecoming parade actually in Southlake. It was phenomenal--people pushing baby carriages and kids in the parade and bands playing and antique cars going down the road."

Southlake had an instant history. Thanks in large part to Schwarz, it doesn't seem so short-lived. This is why many of his critics accuse him of being little more than a nostalgia rapist, pilfering from the past to create his vision. Instead of lending authenticity, they say, it adds the fakeness of which Marshall speaks.

Schwarz believes he's doing things the right way and doing right by the people and cities that hire him. In Frisco, in Flower Mound and here in Southlake, there is a development war going on, and he wants to be on the winning side.

"There are those people who are building big-box retail in a fashion that defeats pedestrianism," Schwarz says from his Washington, D.C., office. "It doesn't even deny it--it defeats it, makes it impossible and really locks you into development patterns that have been postwar development patterns throughout the Sun Belt. And there are those forces that are pushing to look at Texas traditions of towns from the 1890s until some time in the 1940s and say, you know, Texas has a great tradition of pedestrianism and town-building and actually has some of the finest towns in the United States, I think, and trying to build on that."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Barb Cominoli has already drunk the Kool-Aid that Frisco Square is offering, so to speak. The company she works for, Quantum Custom Homes, is one of the companies that has signed on to build homes in the development. Quantum believes in the project so much, it doesn't sell homes anywhere else. Cominoli is, let's just say, enthusiastic.
"That's where we want to be," Cominoli says. "We've decided that we want to be a part of that community, and we've got both feet in there. We're staying for the long haul! It's getting back to where neighbors know neighbors. Kids can play stickball in the street. The neighbors are on the stoop and hi-de-ho and having a barbecue. It's everybody being around in a community, being able to sit in parks together and take long walks to the library, and you can walk to a restaurant and meet your friends and walk back home and not have to keep driving in your car and messing with traffic."

If Marshall is correct, you would have to keep driving. But that doesn't deter Cominoli; if this were a Bond movie, she would be the Oddjob to McDowell's Auric Goldfinger, making sure everything goes according to plan, keeping everyone on message. Except she's not sinister, just committed. Nor does it bother people who have no real business interest in Frisco Square. Residents such as Lisa Feldman, who bought a townhome in December 2002 and is one of what Debby Hanson calls the "true pioneers...willing to live without landscaping and sidewalks because they see the potential."

Feldman is here for "what it will hopefully be in three to five years. I'm originally from back East, and my boyfriend is more of a downtown person, so we were hoping to get the downtown feel but in Frisco and not have to pay the downtown prices."

That this downtown feel is achieved to this point in what is largely a suburban field does not deter true believers like Feldman. One or two days a week, she baby-sits one of the model homes on the property, selling the space to potential residents. At the moment, she has only five neighbors.

Hanson and Five Star know that number won't stay so low for long. When things get up and running and people see how it really works, there won't be enough room for all the people who want to live and work and shop and play at Frisco Square.

"I think it will flip-flop depending on the person, but I think you'll get somebody who offices in here and maybe drives 10 or 15 minutes every day and says, 'This is crazy when I could live in Frisco Square and walk to my office,'" Hanson says. "Same for--we have a lot of retailers that would love to live above their retail space, which is a concept that is not unknown in New York or Chicago or any other city. I think it will just really depend on the amount of buildings that are here."

And not necessarily how the buildings look, either. McDowell wants a 1920s-style town center whether it ends up looking like one or not. He just needs a place for the traditions to start.

"Yankee Stadium is not necessarily a great feat of architectural vision," McDowell says. "But if you ask people about it who live in the community, they will tell you that it is. That's because it's been there for so long that they have memories tied to it. That's the business I want to be in."

[rjlevins]

I'm going to have to disagree with the suburban strip mall comment. If you go to downtown Plano, it is nowhere near a strip mall. Now, Fairview's...maybe considering they don't have anything yet. The types of businesses they will prob get might borderline a stripmall. I would actually prefer them to get a strip mall so that they don't take any unique growth away from Allen. Allen isn't ready to have a leach yet. It's still trying to grow itself.

[rantanamo]

I wouldn't call Frisco's a strip mall either. It's wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy up there, but it will be a functioning town, and what is built is actually very nice. Southlake's looks more like a strip center, but is actually functional govt, has a decent design, and does have housing under construction.

[Gerome]

It may not be a strip mall but they do lack the depth that the promoters of Frisco's <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:p. It is hard to build a neighborhood based on retail, retail is fickle, look at the west end, if it did not have tourism it would be dead.

[bloodandpopcorn]

Well, then Dallas must be getting a crapload more tourists than we hear about! Every Friday and Saturday the West End is more crowded than I can ever really believe. And I find it very hard to believe that it's all tourists. My friends and I love to go eat there. Same with the West Village.

Tourists may love the West End, but they certainly aren't the only ones.

[Lakewooder]

Paris, Texas has a really wonderful town sqaure - the courthouse is located just to the north, not in the main square as in most towns. The square has a beautiful fountain.



http://www.familyoldphotos.com/tx/images/small/downtownparistx-1925.jpg

http://www.rivervalleyproperties.com/paris_texas.jpg


http://www.neto.com/helensho/fountain.gif

[bloodandpopcorn]

Wow! Gorgeous!

Let's get a train out to Paris so I can visit every now and then!

[CTroyMathis]

Benbrook Town Center (http://www.benbrook.org/town_center.htm).

possibly North Richland Hills/Richland Hills w/this article (http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/8539020.htm) (just discussions at this point - and a little different in concept.)

[CTroyMathis]

A village within the city
By:, Lynnette Phillips 01/27/2005

After months of negotiations, a decision will be made on the rezoning of approximately 36 acres in the heart of Stonebridge Ranch from Planned Development, mainly for commercial uses to Planned Development Vertical Mixed Uses at the Feb. 1 city council meeting.

Jeff Blackard, of Blackard Developments, has a plan to not only bring a taste of Europe to McKinney, but to create an authentic European village located on 45 acres by Stonebridge Ranch Drive and Virginia Parkway. And in order to do that, city council will have to approve a zoning which would allow more multi-family units in Stonebridge Ranch.

The village will be built as a scale model, closely resembling the settlement of Supetar on the Island of Brac in the Adriatic Sea.

The building design and character will reflect the mixed land uses of a Croatian seaport village. Blackard expects the village to grow over time as do most villages.

Blackard said he is using one architect and one engineer so that the whole project will remain consistent. They will build a connected system of streets, alleys and sidewalks and the village will also be connected to the neighboring Stonebridge Ranch residential neighborhoods.

"This is a passion project, and not how much money you can make." Blackard said of his development. "This piece of property is one of the most special pieces of property north of LBJ."

Blackard got the idea for the village after he and a partner purchased a resort in Croatia and he wanted to bring that atmosphere to where he lives.

Blackard currently lives in Plano but says when the village is finished he will live in the village.

"I am designing this for what I want," he said. "I want to walk downstairs in the morning and go to the bakery, sit outside and have a drink and walk to the store."

There is just one problem, the city of McKinney does not currently have an ordinance that fits with what Blackard wants to do.

The city's multi-family policy doesn't allow for residential uses on this property, so the city will have to re-write their ordinance concerning multi-family uses.

According to Brian James, Director of Planning, this is a different multi-family development, as compared to the three story apartment buildings that dot the city, and he said that this multi-family development wasn't the type of development the city had in mind when they wrote the ordinance.

"The hang-up in my mind is the residential uses," James said. "Do we want to allow any more residential on this property."

The multi-family units that will be constructed on the property will actually resemble condos and lofts, built above retail stores. The town homes on the property, replicate those found in older urban areas.

"Name one European village that doesn't have people living in it and I'll build that," Blackard said. "We want ownership; a village is successful if people have ownership."

Having the property zoned commercial, keeps the hope alive of lowering the tax base for residents of McKinney. Opponents of the re-zoning feel that if more residential units go on the property, that it will eliminate the retail in the area. However, Blackard said he isn't having any trouble finding prospects to habit retail spots, he already Has Keller-Williams signed up to fill part of his first two-and-half story building.

"This is not a down zone," Blackard said. "This is still zoned all retail."

He said it will build more of a tax base than if it were all retail, with strip malls or if a Target were built on the property.

Dan Hoff, a resident of Stonebridge Ranch said it is more aesthetically pleasing than a Tom Thumb or a Lowes, what Hoff refers to as big boxes.

He said that if one of the boxes went in on the property, those residents that back up to the lake would be staring at a big department store.

"I'm just a grandpa and father that wants something good out here," Hoff said. "I just want to get this thing finished."

Hoff said he is excited to be able to walk from his house to the village and just walk around.

"This is just so different," Hoff said. "And it'll compliment the downtown."

James said recently more people have come out in favor of the project.

City staff is still working on their recommendation to city council.

"This has the potential to be a good thing for the city," James said. In his mind the question remains "can we write the ordinance in a way to give us what we want?"

[texman]

"This is just so different," Hoff said. "And it'll compliment the downtown."


Oh ok, its going to benefit downtown when its 6 miles away.

[CTroyMathis]

New 'economic center' planned for Fairview
By Krystal De Los Santos, Staff Writer 09/22/2005
Visit: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15258149&BRD=1426&PAG=461&dept_id=525682&rfi=6



The Village of Fairview retail center will soon make its home in the Town of Fairview, becoming the first major commercial development in what is hoped to one day become an economic center.

"They'll be getting what will ultimately be a premiere entertainment, fashion, shopping and dining destination. It will be one of the premiere projects in the Metroplex," said Gar Herring of the MG Herring Group, the project's developers. "It will be an open-air lifestyle center with office space, a hotel and possible civic uses." The 200-acre regional "lifestyle center" will be located Stacy Road between U.S. 75 and S.H. 5. Another 200-acre sister development, The Village of Allen, will be located on the other side of Stacy in Allen.

The center in Fairview will include a Dillard's, Foley's and possibly J.C. Penney. Plans also include a movie theater, restaurants and upscale stores built around a village green and fountain area creating a pedestrian-friendly, European-style shopping area. Stores will be placed back-to-back so they face outwards on all sides without an unattractive blank wall on the back side. Total space may approach 1 million square feet.

"That area has been growing for several years with strong income growth," Herring said. "A lot of the people who live there commute for their shopping needs, so we think this will be something superior in that it will be more convenient with more amentites." The MG Herring Group also plans to build office and residential above some of the shops.

Fairview Mayor Sim Israeloff said the development fits well with the city's goal of attracting a mixed-use project to fuel its Commercial Planned Development District.

"The town's planning and patience are finally paying off," Israeloff said. "We developed very tough standards and held out for a special project appropriate to our town. It will take hard work to make this project come together, but it fits well with our C.P.D.D. plan, and I believe will exceed our expectations" Sustainable development like the Village of Fairview is a trend in retail centers which mixes commercial, residential and parks projects to create an area were people can "live, work and shop all within the same walking distance," he said.

Town leaders are excited about the Village of Fairview because the town "has an almost exclusively residential tax base," Israeloff added, meaning city services are funded by residents.

With commercial development moving into the city, business owners will "shoulder" some of the burden of paying for city services, possibly one day reducing the residential tax base. The "power center" across Stacy Road in Allen is reserved for big box retail.

"Having his project span both Fairview and Allen will benefit both cities and will hopefully make road improvements and other issues something we can deal with together," Israeloff said. The MG Herring group hopes to start construction in late 2006 and open the Village of Fairview in 2008.

[John Peter Smith]

These town squares are basically suburban strip malls without the typical strip mall look. Masking up a suburban strip mall doesnt make it a downtown. I actually laughed out loud when I read that. It's so true.

I'll never forget my daughter's description of Southlake's Town Center, when with no prompting whatsoever on my part she said, "Dad, it's just like Disney World."

[darkblood]

I actually laughed out loud when I read that. It's so true.

I'll never forget my daughter's description of Southlake's Town Center, when with no prompting whatsoever on my part she said, "Dad, it's just like Disney World."

Southlake is one of those magical places where every building by law must look the same. If I were to create a town center, it would more like a little big city, with small skyscrapers, bright and unique colors, and more interestingly-shaped buildings.

[Lakewooder]

Jeff Blackard, of Blackard Developments, has a plan to not only bring a taste of Europe to McKinney, but to create an authentic European village

Wow, just like Bachman Lake in the 1970s...gee I miss Number 3 Lift, Chelsea Street Pub, The Beggar, After the Gold Rush, etc...

[vman]

These new lifestyle centers are just like the huge strip malls every surburb built ten years ago. Every surburb is doing them, thus every surburb will continue to look like every other surburb.

[infoscott]

The village I lived in was Shoeningen, West Germany, with a population of about 10,000. I could walk it from one end to another, and the only big box stores we had were an Aldi Market and some generic grocery store.

The European village model can work very well if it is done right. Unfortunately when it is done by people with single use zoning thinking, it's often done wrong. The zoning laws have to be retailored to mixed use, and be specific about what is allowable in a mixed use building. Prescott, Arizona is a good example of a town square area that has been well preserved, yet updated with current retail businesses.

Where I still live in Orange County, California, we have about 34 municipalities that have all sprawled into each other. Some of the older towns have preserved their "Old Town", including Tustin, Orange, Laguna Beach, and to a lesser extent Irvine. Some "Master Planned Communities" have tried to recreate an old town feel or have broken up the zoning in order to reduce transit times and/or keep all living activities within the same community. Towns like Laguna Beach that are very particular about their image will try to keep franchise businesses out of the central area altogether. Those that make it in usually have to conform to architectural guidelines to hide their big box/big business feel.

Putting flats above strip malls does not a village make. Nor does chopping up larger zoned areas into smaller zones and mixing it up like a jigsaw. Likewise putting residences above a McDonalds is just silly. The point is to have medium to small businesses (boutiques if possible) on the ground floor commercial level and have a limited number of multifamily above them.

In Dallas CBD I've seen DPL and the InterUrban building as two good examples of buildings that lend themselves to a "downtown village" feel for central Dallas. Titche-Gottinger could qualify if they could just get their ground floor leased out! :eek:

[CTroyMathis]

New urbanism is picking up steam in Duncanville
Work on downtown offices, town houses to start in spring
12:00 AM CST on Friday, December 23, 2005
By HERB BOOTH / The Dallas Morning News
Visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-townhome_23met.ART.West.Edition2.155a494c.html

Duncanville has taken another step toward revamping its downtown into a new urbanism hub after approving a town house and office project that should start construction in the spring.

The Duncanville City Council approved on a 5-2 vote Tuesday a proposal that would build a 31-unit town house and office development on a 1.8-acre tract bounded by Center Street, Merrill Avenue and Cherry Street. Five homes, all about 1,000 square feet, now occupy the tract.

Officials with Duncanville, which has little land left to develop, said they have few options but to consider smaller ventures that encourage "sustainable communities" or new urbanism. That's a development philosophy that promotes walking, living and working in communities that contain housing, offices, shops and shared open spaces.

As a bonus, Duncanville officials said they will use the town house project to apply for regional funding that would pay for improved streets and drainage in the city's core.

City Manager Kent Cagle said the North Central Texas Council of Governments has opened up $40 million in funding for cities that have "sustainable community" projects.

Developer Monte Anderson said the project would start around April and last up to 2 ½ years. Mr. Anderson is becoming one of the southern sector's chief advocates for new urbanism. These developments have been sprouting by the hundreds throughout the country in recent years.

Mr. Anderson developed Main Station, which is within walking distance of the new project. At the two-story, 22,000-square-foot Main Station, Mr. Anderson built spaces for restaurants and shops with lofts atop the structure. All the lofts have been leased, and nearly all the retail space has been taken. Both projects are similar to larger mixed-use developments such as Addison Circle or Southlake Town Square.

Not everyone favored the new Duncanville development.

Council members Anthony Skinner and Johnette Jameson said density, size of the units and parking bothered them, so they voted against the project.

"This project is in my district," Mr. Skinner said. "I absolutely, whole-heartedly support this concept. I have problems with the density and the size of the units."

Ms. Jameson said one of her main concerns is parking. She said when the stores in that area are full, parking becomes tougher.

Carole Twitmyer, the project's architect, said shared parking is integral to new urbanism. She said customers can use the on-street parking during the day, while residents can use it at night.

Resident Dick Gartin said he considers the project a winner.

"I live in a four-bedroom home and am 74 years old," said Mr. Gartin, who added he wants to rid himself of the upkeep of a traditional home. "I don't have any place I can move in Duncanville unless I want to pay rent. I'm for it, and I think we need more of them built in Duncanville."

Despite criticism, the density, shared parking and unit size are part of what might make the project eligible for regional grants.

Lara Rodriguez, spokeswoman for North Central Texas Council of Governments, said the agency's Regional Transportation Council would award the funding in three categories: transit-oriented development, historic downtowns and preserving land for future "sustainable" projects.

She said the fact that Duncanville has no mass transit doesn't make much difference in the application.

Mr. Anderson's project is within walking distance from a Burlington Northern-Santa Fe rail line that is slated to eventually become a commuter rail line.

Alicia Hopkins, senior transportation planner for the agency, said there are many cities not part of a transit authority that might qualify for the funding.

"Some day it will be a rail line," Ms. Hopkins said. "That may be 50 years from now, but that's what we'll have to do in the Dallas region. We can't continue to be so spread out. Projects like this work. Just look at Southlake Town Center or Mockingbird Station."

[Tnekster]

McKinney, Roanoke & Duncanville buying into rejuvenation idea
Dallas Business Journal - January 26, 2007by Dave MooreStaff Writer
Carroll Burgoon
http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2007/01/29/story8.html?page=2

Three North Texas cities are formulating plans to convert their decaying downtowns into thriving hubs of apartments, condos and commerce.

Urban planner Scott Polikov is part of an $920,000 effort to draw up separate plans for McKinney, Roanoke and Duncanville that will replace those communities' decaying cores with walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods that he claims will drive property values up and build sustained tax bases for the cities.

Polikov's initiatives move away from viewing outlying cities as satellites of Dallas and Forth Worth, and toward making them destinations unto themselves.

Polikov, a native Texan and former Washington lobbyist, is now preaching the gospel of mixed residential and commercial development, referred to as "new urbanism," to many smaller North Texas towns, where decision-makers are joining his congregation, especially Duncanville Mayor David Green.

"You're either going to redevelop and make a community that everyone's proud of, or you're going to decline," Green said. "There's no treading water."

Polikov, president of Fort Worth-based Gateway Planning Group Inc., says that all this can be done at a net gain to the cities involved, as long as there's a collaboration between cities and private partnerships.

One study Polikov commissioned by Austin-based economic analysis firm TXP Inc., showed development in downtown Roanoke would net about $181,000 annually in new property and sales taxes.

And cities are literally investing in this vision: Duncanville has committed to spend $295,000 for its plan, Roanoke has committed to spending $275,000 and McKinney is spending $350,000.

Beyond Polikov, McKinney has engaged three other firms -- HNTB, Civic Design Associates and Mesa Design -- in planning its future downtown.

New urbanism, in short, focuses on promoting pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods that have a mix of housing, retail and service jobs. The idea aims to restore a sense of community to a neighborhood by mixing homes and commerce.

Smaller downtowns such as Duncanville, Roanoke and McKinney work well with this philosophy because they already have small neighborhoods that have the potential for rebirth, Polikov said.

While Duncanville leaders concede their downtown isn't completely revitalized yet, they don't think it's too far away.

The city of Duncanville bought a block on Main Street to help feed the rebirth of its downtown. The development of the property -- likely with upscale townhouses -- will follow after the city gets plans back from Polikov this fall, Green said. The city paid about $350,000 for the land, as its contribution to Main Street area improvement project.

Duncanville officials said the development is being aided by $564,000 in North Central Texas Council of Government grants.

The money will pay for street and sidewalk improvements. Private developers are expected to build the 31 townhouses, which will be built above street-level businesses.

A chance at rail
While access to rail travel isn't requisite to create a walkable downtown, Duncanville, Roanoke and McKinney are planning to include it in their downtown plans.

A complicating factor for McKinney is that State Highway 5 would separate downtown from its potential rail station. As a result, Polikov plans on lobbying the Texas Department of Transportation to reduce the highway's speed to about 30 mph and to narrow the five-lane highway to make it more pedestrian-friendly.

One problem is that none of the three cities have means of funding a rail line, though there's talk of exempting a rail tax from the statewide cap on sales tax.

"The rail station depends on the action of this year's state Legislature," said Duncanville Economic Development Director Earle Jones. Jones said there's little doubt whether Duncanville will see passenger train travel return to its city limits. "It is a question of 'when', not 'if,' " he said.

dmoore@bizjournals.com | 214-706-7112

[tamtagon]

Polikov, a native Texan and former Washington lobbyist, is now preaching the gospel of mixed residential and commercial development, referred to as "new urbanism," to many smaller North Texas towns, where decision-makers are joining his congregation, especially Duncanville Mayor David Green.

"You're either going to redevelop and make a community that everyone's proud of, or you're going to decline," Green said. "There's no treading water."

I think it's funny, and a little pathetic, that the ancient social need for centralize activity - the human motivation to "invent" cities and their public meeting/trading spaces - has emerged to be presented as a new idea, branded and marketed to municipal leaders. The bandwagon which would defy all suburan existance as unsustailable is going to bring about serious municipal trouble.

The suburban lifestyle is the true mode of existance innovation. The rise of suburban communities mark the two/three generations during which quality of life increased exponentially in this country. New Urbanist Preaching is just now possible because we are just now learning to guage how big is too big for a swath of sububia.

Many of the far flung municipalities hoping to re-centralize their historic downtown areas as a primary gathering place will rely too heavily on marketing to create perceptions of a new urban location, and will fail in the long run. Watch out for the New Urbanist snake oil salestaff who would manipulate tax incentives into corporate profits and short lived open air mall environments. Attempts to brand an area with a specific experience only works if the experience is an effect of the setting. I suspect politicians in places like McKinney, Roanoke and Duncanvill will aim to create an environment that can occur only in first run suburban areas like Richardson or Lake Highlands or Mesquite.

The directive all Dallas satellite communities should adopt to maximize long range, consistently improving qaulity of life is a committment to rapid transit into the central urbanized environment blended with central TOD developments appropriately scaled as area neighborhood gathering places. Only with a non-highway alternate connection into downtown Dallas will suburban communities be able to sustain the touted new urbanist living centers structured by neighborhood uniqueness. McKinney's biggest effort right now should be an extention of DART trains from Plano. Frisco should already be lining up Collin and Denton County support for a new North-South light route into Dallas strategically positioned between the DCTA's forth coming commuter rail and the existing Red Line to Plano.