Category Archives: Uncategorized

Draft job proposal discussed at recent meeting | Shepherdstown Chronicle

But what really stands out is this…

…in describing the proposed annexation of Rumsey Green:

Eric Lewis, part of Rumsey Development Group, said in an interview on July 20 that the engineer working on the development would employ tenants of smart growth to the commercial development, which will have a grocery store anchor as well as multi-use buildings. But, he said, the biggest feature of smart growth he sees being utilized on this project would be interconnectivity and walkability to downtown Historic Shepherdstown.

I’m not here to berate the idea of development, the developer or even the engineer’s intent. For all I know, the parties involved are as frustrated as I — although to date they have not expressed such.

The fact is, from what I have seen so far, with some knowledge of existing traffic flow, coupled with the current nature of West German Street-Martinsburg Pike (Rt. 45) and what I know from planning commission meetings, the stated goals are not being attained. And, not lightly, I would note that these laudable goals are perhaps unattainable.

The town, in cooperation with the county and private parcel owners in the Green Triangle* of Shepherdstown must move beyond the singular effort applied to any one parcel. This is the only way that the intent of Eric Lewis and the Rumsey Development Group will be realized.

Notes:

*With my wife, I jokingly refer to the area between Rt. 45, Rt. 480 and Potomac Farms Drive (the bypass) as the “golden triangle”, in reference to the like-named area of Paris. Green is as good as golden, for it is now mostly green, will generate green (profits in US$) and has the potential to be green (as a exemplary case for sustainable development).

Something looked familiar about it…

Cousin!

Villa Kram house includes party walls—as well as ceilings and floors. – Studio Infusion | Slide show | GreenSource.

Fætter! (I hope I have that right — “cousin” in Danish?)

Sketch for a house for a couple in love, who wanted to live together — but in two houses.

Notes:

I forgot that some most of my readers would not know that the sketch below is mine — from 1997. It has not been published anywhere until now. I am tickled to see something similar in built form.

Figure-ground-mash-up

Take note of the key in the upper left hand corner. (Click the image for a larger PDF of the map.) Three elements are shown for scale:

  1. The hexagon is part of what planners (or a landscape architect in this case) refer to as a center-point plan. Each hexagon center-point represents a node to translate into an urban village feature: a school, a library, a commercial center. The walking distance between nodes (9 minutes on this Shepherdstown map, 10 minutes in an idealized map) is used as a planning principle for the distance that people will generally walk from node to node — your milage may vary. That pedestrians might find focal points distributed in similar patterns with similar distances is experientially important — encouraging longer walks to goods and services than they might ordinarily take.
  2. The 185,300 square foot (4.25 acre) figure is, roughly, one Shepherdstown block — more akin to those on the north side of German Street up to High Street.
  3. The 40,000 square foot figure is comparable to the size of a midsize grocery store.

Other notes:

  • The larger hatched parcel to the west of St Agnes is the Rumsey Green parcel.
  • The smaller hatched rhombus is the former town dump. This is the proposed new library site — the red rectangle is approximately 11,000 sf. The arms trace an additional 19,000 sf.  A bee line walk from the existing library (also in red) to the new site is 3800 feet (a 17 minute walk at 4 kph). But we are not bees. Tracing a line on a proposed route in Google maps suggests a walk of approximately 24 minutes.

Why write about the Potomac River bridge?

I started this project as a look at Princess Street, calling it “rt230″ as a nod to most important role of Princess Street at this time: a way through town. But it is also a nod to Rt. 230 for what it used to be, the crossing of the Potomac. Google Maps still marks the extension of Princess Street to the river as Co. Route 230. I’m told there are no county roads in West Virginia. The name no doubt lingers from a time my property address was Rural Route 230, a designation lost in the “911″ addressing system.

Attention to the river front is inextricably linked to Princess Street. On a related note, I consider the rebuilding of the Potomac River crossing at its existing location to be a mistake, mostly due to the missed opportunity of relieving the four-way stop of some traffic load. Also lost was an opportunity to revitalize Princess Street and reintroduce the corner of Princess and German as “downtown”. Would I have gone so far as suggest that traffic be routed to the former point of crossing, marked by the upriver set of existing stone bridge piers? I can not say.

What could still happen though, is a secondary pedestrian-scaled bridge could be built on this historic former crossing — one which better connects to the tow path. Imagine a span for conveyances other than cars and trucks: let’s say motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians and maybe even horses. Make it flood resistant, where flooding is accepted as inevitable although without submitting to its destructive force.

The new bridge and the effort to provide “riverfront” amenities — access to the tow path, the “overlooks”* — is a sad effort of tacked on gestures in a world dominated by vehicular traffic. Shunting some traffic to a new span up river would have freed the existing span to maintain its (barely) more intimate scale of the bridge it replaced. As it is now, true relationships to the river can only be brought about through introducing a new crossing or new access. Is it affordable? Unlikely. But that’s not a question for here and now.

Notes:
*The overlooks are even worse than “tacked on”. They are advanced planning and construction for a replacement span or *gasp* a second span. I’ve not seen the bridge plans but it is odd to me that the jurisdictions involved even considered that this would somehow be advantageous for the future. It’s easy enough to build new abutments if a replacement span is required, but there is no way a four lane crossing will work with the connections in Maryland and West Virginia.