Military housing in TND format wins EPA award

Atraditional neighborhood design offering affordable housing and other amenities for Navy personnel in San Diego has won a National Award for Smart Growth Achievement from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Torti, Gallas & Partners of Silver Spring, Maryland, provided architecture and urban design services for the 50-acre development, called The Village at NTC. Situated at the former Naval Training Center at the western end of San Diego Bay, near the Point Loma neighborhood where new townhouses sell for upwards of $750,000, the redeveloped site provides military families with 500 affordable townhouses, organized with vehicular access from rear alleys so that they front onto the street and feature porches, plantings, and attractive streetscapes. A community center offers extensive indoor and outdoor recreation facilities. Seven acres have been designated for a future elementary school and recreational space. Robert Goodill, a principal at Torti, Gallas, says some of the reasons it won a Smart Growth award were: The Department of the Navy chose to redevelop the site for affordably priced housing for military families in a high-end market; the housing lies within walking distance of some of the facilities the sailors use; recreational fields are shared with the schooldistrict; and the Navy Exchange on the site was redesigned to serve as a market offering better connections to the neighborhood. A partnership made up of the Navy, a development team, a design/build entity, and a property management entity carried out the project. The same partnership will redevelop two other new neighborhoods along the same lines and undertake renovation in two other neighborhoods. The EPA also presented Smart Growth Achievement Awards to: • The Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Treasurer’s Office, for a program that works with banks and municipalities to finance home improvement loans in older Cleveland neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs. Since 1999, the Housing Enhancement Loan Program has generated over 4,700 loans, worth more than $57 million, at a cost to taxpayers of less than $1 million per year. • Wake County Public School System and the City of Raleigh, North Carolina, for its Moore Square Museums Magnet Middle School, which fills a formerly blighted four-acre city block on the east side of Raleigh’s downtown. The school’s 600 students walk to local museums as part of their daily routines. • Metropolitan Council of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, for using funds from the state’s Livable Communities Act to help municipalities put smart growth principles into practice. Since 1996, grants totaling nearly $100 million have been awarded to communities, helping to build or rehabilitate 7,260 for-sale housing units and 1,911 rental units and reclaim 940 acres of polluted land. • Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ Office of Quality Growth, for helping communities do such things as improving strip commercial corridors, generating infill development, and preserving open space. Since 2000, the Office of Quality Growth has provided $350,000 in grants to 27 communities. For more information, see www. epa.gov/smartgrowth.