Architectural brainstorm plans progressive changes for Wasilla

WASILLA -- Philip Bess surveys the basement of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church hawkishly, taking in piles of line drawings, sketches and sheets of graph paper, humming laptops and cellular phones, and bins full of pencils and permanent markers.

Then, he yawns.

Bess is the leader of the eight-person team of architects currently evaluating possible uses for the 7.5 acre lot between the Wasilla post office and Wasilla Middle School, currently owned by Valley Residential Services, in an intensive week-long architectural brainstorming session called a charrette. And he's been keeping very long hours.

Bess and his crew intend to renovate the 7.5 acres from the ground up, both literally and figuratively. They are not only working to discover how the land might best be used, but critiquing the way people think about urban planning, and the manners in which this can be improved upon. Due in part to this complete rethinking, the charrette, famous in the architectural community for its short duration and intensive focus, is always very draining for its participants; thus the long hours.

On Monday, Bess held a public meeting to discuss the theories and practices underlying his efforts. "We're in favor of neighborhoods that use automobiles as conveniences rather than necessities," he said. Bess mentioned that the lot currently under scrutiny was particularly ripe for development owing to its proximity to not only a post office, a middle school, a high school, and an elementary school, but also its nearness to a church, several major shopping centers, a park, and a bank. "Humans are social animals," said Bess, rephrasing an ancient proverb. "We need communities and we need each other.

"Right now we're trying to get our minds around the site," said Bess, who said the team was looking at the possibility of combining special needs housing, standard marketed housing, and commercial development within the area.

Although the large surface area and low density of Wasilla's downtown makes it a particularly apt candidate for extensive city planning, Bess believes that any city in the world can benefit from expert architectural attention.

"Planning is critical not only to Alaska, but everywhere," he said. Bess believes that Alaska, owing to its amount of natural beauty, actually deserves a well-planned urban area to accompany it. "There's nothing that says that a beautiful landscape and a beautiful town can't coexist," he said.

The group typically works on a larger scale than the 7.5 acres currently under consideration, but believes there's a lot of potential in the small lot, and therefore can invest a lot of energy in it.

Many of the difficulties encountered by the team have to deal with zoning laws and their tendency to draw definite lines between commercial and residential areas.

"The most interesting part is that we're not trying to pursue an alternate legislative solution," said Bess, who is endeavoring to fit both commercial and residential development into the area, which is zoned as commercial space.

The amount of parking required for the complex also presents a unique challenge. Wasilla's local laws require all housing complexes to have two spaces of off-street parking for every unit of housing in the complex. Bess's theories, which emphasize the importance of on-street parking and economy of space, must expand to accommodate these guidelines.

The team will produce a diagrammatic plan to show the Valley Residential Services board by Friday, which will then make a decision on what to do with the property. The staff of VRS believes that, through this project, an area can be created that will enrich not only Wasilla, but the entire Valley.

Contact Daniel Spoth at daniel.spoth@frontiersman.com.