November 16, 2005
Public has say on bay project
Your Bay, Your Say presents six designs from MSU students
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Amphitheater, boardwalk, history museum, interactive fountain, children's play area, atrium.
The sky was the limit Thursday evening for ideas on what to do with Traverse City's 12,000-foot waterfront at the base of the West Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay. A centerpiece of the city's recreation, economy and identity, the Grand Traverse Bay is crucial to the region.
The Your Bay, Your Say initiative is an ongoing process launched last June to allow the public, civic leaders and student designers from Michigan State University to dream and brainstorm how to best use this land as a whole.
With the removal of the Traverse City Light & Power plant earlier this year and a recent decision to close the Clinch Park Zoo, the time was ripe for a fresh, from-the-ground-up look at what to do with this key property.
After meetings over the summer and visits to the area by the students, Thursday evening at the Oleson Center 192 people gathered to hear six proposals. Students in MSU's Small Town Design Initiative presented their ideas remotely via video link from East Lansing. In addition, six illustrations posted at the Oleson Center documented their concepts.
The community made it very clear that the Traverse City waterfront is very important," said Josh Cook, one of the student designers.
Each team outlined their vision for the land based on input from previous public gatherings. Attendees at last week's gathering were invited to take notes on the various presentations and turn them in to help guide the next phase of the process.
Barbara Fishbeck attended the meeting in honor of her mother, Susan, who as a city commissioner decades ago tried to thwart the building the power plant. Fishbeck said that her mother's sustaining vision of a clear view into the bay drives her interest in the Your Bay, Your Say initiative.
"She fought so hard for that thing not to be built and not to disrupt our view," Fishbeck recalled. "I'd like to see it as open of space as possible, usable space but not structures."
In addition to her thoughts to keep the space uncluttered, Fishbeck expressed concerns about how the ideas presented would hold up over time.
"Maintaining it is huge, some ideas are gorgeous and grandiose, but how would they be maintained?" she asked.
Rick Buckhalter of Traverse City has attended all the meetings in the initiative and expressed some reservations about how public ideas were received. He also was motivated to keep the ultimate design along the waterfront simple.
"I'm overwhelmed," he said after studying the six drawings. "I'd rather see a few simple things done really well than many complicated things."
A $25,000 grant from the Rotary Charities in June seeded the Your Bay, Your Say project. This money will also pay for a future step of detailed engineering drawings of a consolidated plan, noted Tim Erwin of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute. The Institute has also applied for state Department of Environmental Quality Coastal Management Program funds for this step.
"The goal of the next meeting is to bring all the concepts together and then an engineering firm can do a more detailed design based on the student projects," he said.
"It's been a neat process to be involved with and it's pretty open and we've just turned to the community and said, 'What do you think will happen?'¡" Ervin added. "I think the process that we're going through here can be a model for other communities."
The next community meeting of Your Bay, Your Say will be on Thursday, January 19, at Northwestern Michigan College's Hagerty Center.