From the July/August 2006 issue of New Urban News

Katrina Cottages funded; implementation questions remain

Philip Langdon

 James Dougherty - Dover, Kohl & Partners
President Bush signed legislation in June authorizing $400 million to replace tens of thousands of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers that displaced families have been occupying since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf Coast last year. Some of the money may be used to built Katrina Cottages — small dwellings that Marianne Cusato and other new urbanists devised in recent months.

In late June Gulf Coast state officials were trying to determine how the program will work and what sorts of dwellings will qualify for the federal funds. The goal “is to replace as many [FEMA trailers] as possible, starting in the flood velocity zones,” where the hurricane destruction was the most severe, said Bruce Tolar of Tolar LeBatard Denmark Architects in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, who is developing privately financed Katrina Cottages.

The federal program is a direct result of new urbanist proposals, made during last October’s Mississippi Renewal Forum, that FEMA stop relying on trailers and mobile homes and instead help supply small, well-designed, regionally appropriate dwellings for people whose homes were destroyed. It appears that each state will oversee the housing program within its boundaries. A major question is whether governments will use the money for cottages along new urbanists lines or will spend it on other designs.

“The money theoretically has to be approved by FEMA,” said Ben Brown, communications director for the Congress for the New Urbanism’s Mississippi renewal effort. FEMA or the states could insist on dwellings significantly different from the new urbanist designs. Regardless of that, Brown expects Katrina Cottages to play an important role in private sector rebuilding. A privately funded group of Katrina Cottages is already under development in Ocean Springs, and new urbanists are working to get one or more clusters built in Louisiana.

COTTAGE VILLAGE
Tolar, Michael LeBatard, and other partners acquired a two-acre site along Government Street (old US 90) that can accommodate 20 cottages, ranging from about 700 or 800 to 1,200 square feet. They will use designs from a variety of architects, including Marianne Cusato, Eric Moser, Steve Mouzon, Geoffrey Mouen, and Gary Justiss as well as Tolar’s firm. Most of the designers of the cottages to be placed in Ocean Springs participated in the Renewal Forum, which Andres Duany and the Congress for the New Urbanism organized at the request of Governor Haley Barbour. The Ocean Springs dwellings will feature at least three competing construction methods — “modular, system-built, and stick-built,” Tolar told New Urban News.

Tolar said one encouraging factor is that the Lowe’s chain of building supply stores is expected to sell complete cottage-building kits at many of its locations in the Gulf Coast region.

Lowe’s, a North Carolina-based chain of more than 1,250 stores, is scheduled to deliver the components for its first cottage — a prototype two-bedroom dwelling — to its store in Ocean Springs, east of Biloxi, by mid-July. The prototype, Tolar said, will be “a stick kit” containing all the parts that a homebuyer or contractor needs, from light switches and ceiling fans to flooring. “Everything from start to finish except a foundation will be available through their kit,” he said. “Our hope is to have it in place and finished in time for the Governor’s Recovery Expo,” which will take place August 11-13 at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi, Tolar said. At this writing, the cost of the Lowe’s kit had not been determined.

Tolar was also involved in late June in negotiations to place a second demonstration cluster of cottages in New Orleans. “The idea is to show different types of housing, geared to the Louisiana vernacular,” he said of the New Orleans effort, on which Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. was collaborating. As of late June, no commitments for the New Orleans project had been obtained.

The bulk of the demand on the Gulf Coast appears to be for dwellings of about 700 to 1,200 square feet, containing at least two bedrooms and preferably three. In March Tolar estimated the dwellings may range from $35,000 to $100,000, exclusive of site preparation. Panelized and modular housing producers have expressed interest in design ideas initiated by new urbanists. “Everybody wants to participate or be helpful,” Tolar observed, “but sometimes you find the systems of manufacturers aren’t up to what we want. Some are so busy, you have to battle to get them to change their product.”

Brown said there have also been talks about USA Weekend possibly joining in a project to build a Katrina Cottage in Washington, DC, as a model of affordable housing.

MISSISSIPI CITES WORK ON SMARTCODE
By late June most of the 11 Mississippi communities that were the subject of last October’s charrette had moved toward adoption of the SmartCode or new urbanist-influenced plans, according to Sandy Sorlien, who has been involved in SmartCode preparation. Mayor Brent Warr called for approval of the SmartCode in Gulfport by July 1. Waveland had Robert Orr lead a design charrette in late June. The Planning Commission in Pass Christian was to vote June 28 on whether to send its finished SmartCode to the Board of Aldermen for adoption.

In Long Beach, Dhiru Thadani of Ayers Saint Gross consulted with a citizen SmartCode committee on a Transect-based regulating plan; in mid-July the Council will vote on the master plan and code. D’Iberville calibrated its SmartCode in mid-June, and a final draft was being prepared by Jaime Correa and Seth Harry. Gautier has been reviewing the SmartCode for a town center. Moss Point conducted a SmartCode and design charrette. Pascagoula received a SmartCode for possible adoption. In Ocean Springs, where a code and design charrette took place in May, Victor Dover produced a plan for a mixed-use waterfront district that would greet motorists arriving from Biloxi on a rebuilt US 90 bridge across Biloxi Bay. Ocean Springs Alderman-at-Large Julia Weaver said ideas from Dover, Kohl and Partners garnered “stunning reviews” from “typically cranky people.”

In Biloxi, which has been the most difficult Mississippi city for new urbanist planners, a Living Cities team produced a plan that looks to rebuild and reinforce the parts of the urban fabric that are mostly intact — in the higher, less damaged half of East Biloxi, said David Spillane, who headed Goody Clancy Associates’ effort there. In that area there are opportunities for building cottages, townhouses, three-story senior housing buildings, and other dwellings that would complement the pre-hurricane character of the area, Spillane said. Open space may be the best use for some low-lying land in East Biloxi’s more devastated sections, since federal flood standards would otherwise “require buildings to be raised 12, 15 feet in the air,” which would be at odds with a neighborhood feeling, he said. “In the low areas, he said, “the sense of a tightly knit street as a model doesn’t seem very plausible.”

New urbanist teams across the Gulf Coast have continued to grapple with the flood elevation recommendations that have been emerging from FEMA. In D’Iberville, one idea suggested by Seth Harry was that casinos be built on “a continuous raised podium that could provide for both a storm surge/wave protection device … [and] a continuous bayfront public promenade.”
This article is available in the July/August 2006 issue of New Urban News, along with images and many more articles not available online. Subscribe or order the individual issue.