A plan for Sandywoods Farm, an affordable community

A plan for Sandywoods Farm, an affordable community for artists in Tiverton, Rhode Island, received an award from CNU New England during the chapter’s annual conference, held at the end of March in Lowell, Massachusetts. Donald Powers Architects of Providence, Rhode Island, used regional vernacular elements to design the 73-unit community, which is to include market-rate housing, artists’ affordable cooperative housing, common open space, and a small mixed-use crossroads where agricultural goods and artists’ products can be sold. The plan incorporates active agricultural land, much of it permanently protected. A plan for mixed-use redevelopment of a 1.7-acre site in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, won an award — even as the jurors expressed regret that the project will likely never be built. The plan, for the long-vacant “Shartenberg block” on Chapel Street, was put together by Robert Orr & Associates of New Haven for developers Leyland Alliance and C.A. White and was submitted to the city in a competition. It envisioned a mix of residential, retail, commercial space, and community space in traditional styles complementing nearby old buildings. Mayor John DeStefano Jr. instead chose to work with a team headed by developer Becker & Becker, whose plan is seen by many New Haveners as out of scale and dispiriting to street life. A third award was won by Southport Green, a transit-oriented development in Southport, Connecticut, featured in the Oct. 2006 New Urban News. The project’s charrette team was made up of Orr’s firm, John Massengale, Patrick Pinnell, Michael Morrissey, and Milton Grenfell, with construction documents by Barton Associates.