Art and Artifacts Add Appeal to Redevelopments
By Becky Hannum illustrates how everyday art can enhance a project.

As brownfield revitalization has vaulted into fashion this decade, two areas of opportunity for Enrichment remain largely untapped, even as trailblazers show how these elements can add huge value to a rehab or a new project.

The first area is the restoration of industrial equipment and artifacts that preserve a site’s history and heritage. The second is the use of public art and wayfinding graphics to express a project’s connection to its land and space.

Early adapters are enhancing projects with both types of enrichment. This becomes evident in the following examples, which also illustrate the need for advance planning to make them as effective as possible. These examples are derived from just a small fraction of the brownfield developments that continue to sprout across the country. Derelict lands that once contained bustling railroad yards, refineries, manufacturing plants, and the like, are being cleaned up and recycled across America into some of today’s hottest properties.

And with a little innovation, the companies involved in certain of these redevelopments show how Imagination and creativity can add qualities to enhance the already considerable appeal of brownfield developments.

Two projects by Baltimore-based Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, Inc. (SBER) are apt industrial examples. One is Royal Mills at Riverpoint in West Warwick, R.I. The other is Clipper Mill in the Jones Falls Valley neighborhood of Baltimore, Md.

Each is entirely in character for SBER which, since it was founded in 1974, has championed diversity in urban development. Its reputation rests on cleaning up brownfields, recycling materials and restoring historic buildings that bestow character and charm on their cities. In 2006 alone, the company placed 24 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places and spent more than $150 million restoring those buildings for tenants, retailers and urban dwellers.

Royal Mills is a complex of textile buildings that date to the 19th century, the product of an 1889-1890 rebuilding by the B.B. and R. Knight Co., once one of the largest textile manufacturers in the world and the creator of the Fruit of the Loom brand.

After a 1919 fire, a complete reconstruction added another edifice, the Ace Dyeing Building. When SBER acquired the property, it inherited a number of the original wooden spindles and looms. It recycled some of the spindles, fashioning them into door numbers for apartments that already have been built. It is restoring some looms to grace residential commons areas.

Joining these apartments will be other market-rate housing that includes single-occupancy houses and condominiums on the banks of the Pawtuxet River. The 500,000-square-foot site is 14 miles from downtown Providence. The grounds will be developed for public use and the West Warwick Riverwalk will extend through them. In Baltimore, SBER is redeveloping Clipper Mill into a new urban corporate campus and upscale residential community in the Jones Falls Valley. The site of a former foundry will include commercial office space, art lofts and studios, apartments, townhouses, and single-family residential units.
 
The foundry was home to the first looms for producing cotton duck, the cloth used for sails in World War I. It also cast the 36-inch columns and brackets that still support the U.S. Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C. Today, the $53 million complex includes quick access to an interstate highway and a light rail stop at its entrance. Yet it is richer because SBER spent the time and effort required to incorporate authentic references in its designs. SBER recycled Clipper Mill’s industrial cogs and gears into hand rails. It turned the column molds into gas lights surrounding a pool that once was inside a metal shop in the complex.

These touches add to the rustic architecture of an era when industrial operations prevailed. In projects such as these, SBER routinely saves the floors in former industrial buildings and mills. Often, these planks, usually crafted from hardwoods, show remarkable character and beauty as well as the hallmarks of handcrafting.

Pertinent examples of public art and wayfinding graphics abound in Gateway Village, an urban technology center on 15 acres of brownfields in the heart of Charlotte, N.C. Completed in 2000, the project includes two mixed-use office buildings with a combined 1.1 million square feet of space. An associated parking deck, which fills most of a city block, is surrounded on three sides by apartments and condos.

Early on, joint-venture partners Bank of America and Cousins Properties added a second theme to the project’s strong orientation as a technology center for the bank. Gardens at Gateway encompasses much more than the 1.2-acre garden created on top of a loading dock.

Meant to create a sense of place and enhance the built environment, the Gardens theme includes identification of public art locations throughout the complex that sprawls across three city blocks. This meant prioritizing art opportunities in the parking garage and in eight lobbies, in addition to the garden.

Artists were asked to conceptualize civic art, such as large, freestanding pieces and hardscape art. What they ultimately achieved was a handsome fountain that could support both themes, technology as well as gardens.

Four building lobbies are adorned with art that is rich in texture, pattern and color, and helps evoke the gardens theme. The other four lobbies are graced with art that emphasizes technology by using hard-edge materials, such as glass and Plexiglas. Whimsical wayfinding art incorporates images of insects to help make the parking deck memorable.

Perhaps the defining art work of Gateway Village covers an entire wall of the eight-level parking structure that faces railroad tracks.

The bank commissioned Ned Kahn, a San Francisco-based artist who specializes in outdoor public art, to mask the railroad side of the parking deck with an original creation. His solution, “Wind Veil,” a giant, ever-changing artwork.

“Wind Veil” is 260 feet wide and eight stories tall. It consists of 80,000 small aluminum panels that move freely and often sparkle in the sun as they are rustled by a breeze or a passing freight train. Viewed from the outside, the building appears to move with the breeze.

The art also has a practical application. It provides ventilation and shade for the interior of the garage.

Partly because of the popularity of this piece, Kahn currently is working on 26 commissions. Obviously, his visions for outdoor artwork have caught on across the country. In all, Bank of America commissioned 11 artworks for Gateway Village and located them strategically throughout the property. They were installed on time and within budget and require little or no maintenance. The bank actually reaped savings on the fountain and the works in the parking garage by including the costs of artists’ materials, lighting and mounting hardware in the project’s infrastructure budgets.

With their willingness to incorporate themed art, Bank of America and Cousins Properties created in Gateway Village a must-see tourist destination with edgy housing and toney restaurants. The de-velopment’s unique atmosphere helped Charlotte attract a campus of Johnson & Wales University, the culinary, hospitality and business school.

SBER’s reclamation of buildings and careful reuse of original materials has attracted people who choose to live in a restored neighborhood and are willing to pay a higher-than-market rate to do so. Additionally, they are a magnet to small businesses that realize green is a way of life and want to be a part of the mix. Finally, their specialness breeds specialty. Rather than chain stores, they attract one-of-a-kind retailers, such as bakeries, wine bars and restaurants that create a unique feel for the whole development.

Here are four important guidelines that can help other developers enhance their brownfield projects:

• Preserve the things that make a place special and unique. These might be derived from an area’s industrial heritage, but they could just as easily be from history and culture, local lore or nature.

• Define development boundaries with public art and wayfinding signage to help orient visitors.

• Use art to express the neighborhood’s and greater community’s shared values.

• Offer memorable experiences that give residents and visitors a sense of connection to the place. Following these guidelines will help foster the kind of planning that adds an element of creativity to brownfield developments. By making them even more attractive, it helps them proliferate throughout
this nation’s rich urban landscape.

Becky Hannum is founder of the consulting firm, Art Everywhere, L.L.C., based in the historic Fourth Ward neighborhood of Charlotte, N.C.