Big plans for a small town

Port Wentworth, Georgia, seeks revival through New Urbanism. Can a small, ailing industrial and port city find new life and new tax revenue by building a 5,000-acre new town? Port Wentworth City Manager David Rutherford is convinced that a new urbanist community can do the trick. Located immediately north of Savannah, Port Wentworth’s downtown is being swallowed up by the industrial uses of the Georgia Ports Authority. “Over the next few years, the land use in the city core is moving from the residential and small commercial we have now, to all industrial,” Rutherford says. Rutherford was hired by the city in May 1999 and gave a new direction to plans for revitalizing Port Wentworth. “I shared the new urbanist principles with the council and they said, ‘That’s exactly what we’d like,’” Rutherford says. The city paid for a master plan for 2,000 privately held acres where the new town could be built. Another 3,000 acres may be planned later. Rutherford estimates that the town could eventually bring 40,000 people to a city that currently has a population of 3,500. No developer has been chosen, and the plan by Lott+Barber Architects is the firm’s first stab at the New Urbanism. Furthermore, such an ambitious plan seems a stretch for such a small community. On the other hand, Port Wentworth’s location between Savannah and Hilton Head puts it in the path of tremendous growth. The city is lobbying to make the new town a stop on a possible future light rail connection between Atlanta and Savannah. Progress has been rapid. Citizens voiced their preferences at public hearings in August 1999, and soon thereafter the city hired Lott+Barber to draw up a master plan. Water and sewer infrastructure work was slated to begin in September of this year, and Rutherford hopes that road work and the first construction can begin in January 2001. A preliminary version of the plan shows at least six major neighborhoods focused around common green spaces and interspersed with public wetland areas. The street grid shows a high degree of interconnectivity and alleys are used throughout the plan, except for in the lower-density neighborhood edges. In the middle of the project is an oval park which appears oversized relative to the scale of the surrounding town center. The exact location of retail areas has yet to be determined. Public engine While the local government is the driving force in developing a master plan and development guidelines, the city does not plan to purchase land beyond what is needed for public facilities. “We have kept the property owners involved in the whole process and suggested that we could make the property more valuable with a master plan,” Rutherford says. With a projected buildout of 20 years for the 2,000 acres and 8,000 housing units, landowners would be allowed to sell their land in increments, he adds. With wetlands permits held by the city and a new zoning district already in place, a private developer should have a relatively easy approval process. The city wants to bring several developers to work on separate neighborhoods to make the new town as diverse as possible. A strong wish for a wide range of housing types and prices has been expressed both by the city council and by citizens in public hearings. According to Rutherford, the 8,000 planned units will include a full mix of types at an estimated density of 6 to 12 units an acre.