Healthy & Sustainable Community Development
presented by Janus Welton AIA, BBEI

"The Village Lofts" - A Live / Work Eco-Community
Design for a Sustainable Factory Re-Use and Brownfield Re-Developement

Background:
The "FABRIC" of most Village and Town "EDGES" have become degraded, polluted, deforested, and proliferated with gas stations, fast food joints, strip malls, widened roads, abandoned industrial buildings, dumping sites, and forgotten railroad corridors.
Outdated zoning and planning ordinances pit residential areas against industrial, toxic, and waste sites; while suburban housing developments, gambling casinos, and landfills have threatened many bucolic open spaces, rural farmlands, historic villages and post industrial factories that were once home to the booming industrial revolution and economy of the last century.

In our current search for a more sustainable and carbon free lifestyle, these once forgotten brownfield sites represent the "New Frontier" for infill development and are favored for Green + Sustainable Developments in the 21st Century. This pattern has proven profitable and popular in urban areas, and the time is now to look at our smaller Villages and Towns to save Rural America as we have known it.

The lack of economic development in these post industrial & agricultural rural areas create a low tax base and meager local financial resources. With the post 9/11 shift of urban dwellers to rural areas and the population shift of baby boom “empty nesters” out of the suburbs to smaller communities and homes, the real estate prices have skyrocketed and local residents and their children are being priced out of the housing market.

These "Rural Edges" of Post-Industrial and Agricultural Small Villages and Towns are found in every country in the world! They exist on both the East coast and West coast of America, and in China, India, and even Europe. While they constitute the largest land areas, and are both the "breadbasket" and the most precious "source" of water, food , and manufactured products for more populated cities and regions, they have rarely been the focus of visionary, sustainable architectural and planning models, or recipients of adequate funding and development resources.

Summary :
As the expansion of small towns and villages blur the "Edges" of rural areas, the idea of re-purposing post-industrial brownfields and rezoning these areas to create mixed use Live/Work development by creating smaller "pocket "Eco-Communities within existing Village Infrastructures is far more sustainable and compelling than creating new suburbs or sub-divisions on prime farmlands.

This serves both the local community and the natural ecosystem; by cleaning up the blight from the last century, leaving open spaces for our children who will inherit the planet, and by restoring brownfields and restoring Bio-Diversity We are creating a very exciting Live/Work Loft Sustainable Community in a Renovated Factory setting for Eco-Living and Green Businesses within the lovely Historic Village of Saugerties - just 100 miles north of NYC off the NYS Thruway in a thriving Artist Community just a few miles from Woodstock, NY .in the lovely Catskill Mountains.

Design Concept :
We propose a very viable and sustainable model of Green, Eco-Community within walking distance of the Historic Village of Saugerties, NY. On a 9 acre site incorporating about 50 live/work lofts and "“green" businesses. The following sustainable concepts will be explored at the community scale in a Factory Re-Use at this Post Industrial Brownfield Site.