A mountain village reimagined

The new master plan for Gorham’s Bluff in Alabama strives for greater economic diversity and proposes an innovative integration of an assisted living center. When this remote community in the Appalachian Mountains was first designed in 1993, it was not a pure expression of new urbanist principles, but it clearly stood apart from conventional developments. The plan by New Orleans architect Lloyd Vogt featured a modified street grid, a neotraditional architectural palette, and a small town center with a mix of uses. Eight years later, however, it became evident that the plan was not fine-grained enough to attract a diverse population. Gorham’s Bluff needed a makeover that was more than skin deep. Earlier this year, town founders Clara, Bill, and Dawn McGriff and their general manager Nathan Norris acted on the need for a radical change and convened an informal two-day design workshop with about 30 design professionals and students from throughout the Southeast. Coehesive streetscape The result of this “mini charrette” is a new master plan by Huntsville, Alabama, architect Steve Mouzon. The main flaw in the original plan, Mouzon says, was that “it was a carpet of same- size lots (75 by 100 feet), and that in turn led to a very narrow range of building typologies.” Mouzon’s remedy is a more diverse mix of lot sizes, with an emphasis on smaller 35 to 40 ft. wide lots suited for small cottages. The regulating plan features 10 new housing types — at the upper end of the spectrum the range of typologies has been expanded with boulevard homes to be built on 125 by 150 ft. lots. Along Gorham’s Bluff’s Main Street, Mouzon’s plan calls for what he calls “detached townhomes,” a building type that has the potential to create a cohesive streetscape, but which is illegal in most municipalities. “In a number of small Southern towns,” Mouzon says, “as you get close to the town center, the houses were pulled all the way up to the property line to provide a tighter street presence. Today, if you are doing a traditional town plan, planning agencies will say that you need at least some setback.” No such restrictions exist in Gorham’s Bluff. The property has no zoning, and the development is not subject to building inspections. Lot Diversity needed The lack of diversity in lot sizes has slowed down sales and worked against the creation of critical mass. Though the McGriff family had initially hoped to attract a population made up of equal parts retirees, younger permanent town residents, and “weekend retreaters,” they soon learned that the latter group made up 90 percent of the market, Nathan Norris says. Consequently, many of the people who bought lots have built only small weekend homes with no street presence. At the same time, the high lot prices meant that only a small segment of the population could afford to buy into the community. Gorham’s Bluff essentially had an entry charge of about $200,000, Norris says. To date, only 25 homes have been built. The new configuration of lots should make the community more accessible to those who can afford cottages in the $80,000 to $120,000 range. Norris notes that Gorham’s Bluff has formed a builders guild whose members will work with preapproved architectural designs. For the first time, the developers can then offer buyers a ready-made package of homes and prices and hopefully fill the streets at a greater pace. The new plan doubles the number of homes at buildout from approximately 300 to 600, and a more stringent phasing plan will also go into effect, so construction can be concentrated in designated areas. “One of the big problems has been that the development approach was so piecemeal,” Mouzon says. “The developers opened up half the development and let people build wherever they pleased.” In a way, the slow growth of Gorham’s Bluff has been a blessing in disguise — the community is still so unformed that a complete overhaul can be accomplished with minimal disruption. Revamped street layout Mouzon’s plan also employs a revamped street layout to draw more attention to the town center, in particular a 1938 school building, which has been moved to the site from nearby Pisgah. The winding main street of the original plan will be realigned both east and west of the town center, making the school’s portico a terminating vista from both directions. The main square has been redesigned, changing it from a green lined with detached buildings into a more formal square with multistory buildings and plenty of on-street parking. Using 90-degree perpendicular parking on all sides of the square, Mouzon has been able to fit 600 spaces, thus eliminating the need for any surface parking lots in the community. The views of the Tennessee River valley are perhaps the site’s primary attraction, and several of the early homes were built close to the bluff to take full advantage of this asset. In accordance with the original plan, these homes fronted a road set back quite far from the edge of the bluff. Mouzon argues that a new road should be built close the edge to prevent the view corridor from become a private extension of the back yards of a few privileged home. This proposal, however, generated a fire storm of protest from residents who feared that the area would be crowded by cars and visitors. The compromise solution is that new homes will front onto a public boardwalk, while the existing street will be narrowed into an alley. Assisted living as catalyst An assisted living facility has been part of Gorham’s Bluff’s program from the beginning, but its planned location at the edge of the neighborhood would effectively segregate its residents from the rest of the community. In the new plan, the assisted living is moved to the town square, and comes with a unique strategy for integration. Mouzon’s idea is to turn the facility inside out and make the common facilities of the assisted living center accessible to the community at large. Thus the dining room could become a restaurant for the town, the gift shop would become a general store, and the mail room could double as a post office for the whole community. “The more I look into it, I realize this is something that just has not happened in modern times,” Mouzon says. “The pattern used to be for the old folks to live in apartments over the square, so they could walk very easily to everything. We are simply trying to rediscover that in the guise of an assisted living center.” Mouzon estimates that such a center would have to have approximately 150 residents to make the common facilities economically feasible, and he contends that it has the potential to jump start the town center. According to Norris, the developers intend to build the center and then attract a company to fill the space. Focus on Arts The McGriff family is contemplating additional strategies for quickening the pace of growth in Gorham’s Bluff. Norris says one possibility is using buildings in the town center as time-sharing facilities for corporations that need space for employee training and retreats. The community already draws many visitors during the summer with its performing arts programming, but the plan is to intensify the focus on the arts, bringing in resident artists and expanding the programming to the entire year. The school building will house a museum of local culture and a lifelong learning center and will offer supplementary education for local children. Gorham’s Bluff is unique among new urbanist projects — it is remote and unhampered by regulatory pressures — but its redesign is a good example of the need to reconsider the strengths and weaknesses of a longstanding plan. Mouzon’s plan turns a development that had a sheen of New Urbanism into a neighborhood that incorporates current thinking in new urbanist planning. “The New Urbanism is evolving so fast, and we have found that there is real value in bringing everybody together again and undertaking a replanning,” Norris says. “This site is almost sacred, and we have a higher responsibility to make the community the best it can be.”