Planning By Doing Workshops:
Meet The Teams and The Projects! 

Things are moving quickly with the Glass Street Gateway Planning-By-Doing workshops and hopefully, by now you have already seen some of the exciting results installed within a 5-minute walking radius of the new Save A Lot. Two of the teams have already left their marks near the YFD and Hardy Elementary!

Stay Excited! All of the projects from the workshops will be complete between Fall 2020 and Spring of 2021 when we get busy with the next phase of the gateway improvements including an asphalt mural on Crutchfield Street.

MEET THE TEAMS

Team Homebase presented ideas on the beautification of the ‘Homebase’ – the intersection of Dodson and Glass Street. According to a local community leader, Pastor J, paying homage to a baseball diamond, Homebase will be a meeting of corners, “to inspire a sense of home and community.” This temporary installation will include ‘the looking glass’ which is a piece of movable art with different prompts such as words of encouragement, community resources, pieces of advice, or simply something to be admired or viewed while looking through it. “Everyone from different walks of life will come to this area.”… “In order to speak to everyone to reimagine their future no matter what they are going through.”

Hardy Glass Development Team brainstormed on a safer route to and from Hardy Elementary and presented their ideas after hearing feedback from local parents and teachers on the need for safety improvements for pedestrians and children crossing along Roanoke and Glass Street. This includes encouraging safer routes and wayfinding for students and pedestrians. The Hardy Elementary mascot is the eagle so this team plans to create stencils to paint on the sidewalk leading up to the intersection and crosswalk. This team also identified a curve near Hardy where vehicles travel at a fast speed. To draw attention to the school zone the team proposed yarn art and fence art to slow traffic. 

The Guardians of Sidewalk Team also presented their ideas on safer commuting to and from Hardy Elementary. Noticing that crosswalk signs malfunction, the team assessed existing infrastructure in order to meet project budget and future cost considerations. Because the north-sidewalks are more appealing due to length, continuity, and minimizing crosswalks, team members discussed the use of colored routes, highlighting bike lanes, and installing a crossing guard replica at the intersection of Glass and Dodson to slow traffic and create awareness for the pedestrian zones. 

The members of You’re a STAR Team pitched the idea for the area’s very own Walk of Fame. The installation will be located on the sidewalk from Crutchfield to Daisy in proximity to the YFD. This installation includes a stenciled field pattern designed by local students from Hardy Elementary, spray-painted stars mentioning local community heroes, and an opportunity for expansion through future phases. 

The GATHER Team focused on the open spaces around the Save-A-Lot grocery store. With the store being a new anchor for the community, the emphasis was creating a space that includes models for safety, seating, lighting, accessibility, beautification, art, and engagement. Entitled, Create A Recipe – this installation includes large wooden letters that are movable ‘furniture’  that spell LOVE and serve as a functional use for seating and eating. 

Glass House Collective has been following this community-informed design process with our neighbors and partners since the organization’s inception. We began focusing on this intersection several years ago through a creative community engagement process, which resulted in more than 300 residents identifying landscaping, safety, and beautification as community priorities in the Glass Street Gateway. You will begin to see these projects pop up from now until the spring to complement the new Asphalt Mural on Crutchfield Street. E-mail info@glasshousecollective.org if you’d like to get involved. 

We say thank you to our dream team of partners, friends, neighbors, and GHC staff for making this happen including AIA-Chattanooga, Street Plans, Bloomberg, Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Chattanooga Design Studio.

Glass Street Gateway Community Workshops Focus on Improvements & Interventions  

Teams finalizing ideas to pitch for Fall installations

Our Collective is newly energized after this weekend’s Planning-By-Doing workshop. We had a gorgeous day on Saturday morning for our five teams to immerse themselves in imagining a safe and inviting Glass Street Gateway. The Gateway is a 5-minute walking radius from Crutchfield Street including the Dodson Avenue and Glass Street intersection as well as the Save a Lot, local YFD, and Hardy Elementary. 

We gathered under trees at the YFD, under canopies at the Save A Lot, and at intersections, crosswalks, and bus stops to take a good look all around us. We also paid attention to the asphalt beneath our feet, especially along Crutchfield Street where ideas for a new street mural next to the grocery store were brainstormed from a variety of perspectives. 

The most important perspective is that of our neighbors in Glass Farm, which is why each of our multi-disciplinary teams included residents who live in the focus area. And in case you are wondering about all this pop-up foot traffic during our workshop and walkabouts, we are here to tell you the Glass Street Gateway is big enough for everyone! In fact, one of the objectives of the workshop was to come up with ideas that will accommodate increased pedestrian activities in the area.  Ultimately we hope to use the input gathered in the workshop and lessons learned in the temporary projects to create a community-driven plan for the public realm surrounding the Dodson and Glass intersection. 

We also created some serious buzz (see links below), but rest assure that everyone was practicing carefully thought-out physical distancing protocols. We made sure that teams were small but mighty with less than 10 people assigned to each.  Before beginning, team facilitators were ready with digital thermometers to take everyone’s temperatures when arriving at five different sites within the Gateway. From there, masked participants received individually wrapped toolkits for the day, with work tables and chairs spread out to accommodate basic best practices.  Each team will continue to work together safely with virtual meetings this week to solidify their tactical intervention ideas to implement and test this fall with their $3,000 budgets. 

Community engagement looks different these days but it sure feels the same! Fantastic!

Thanks go to our dream team of partners, friends, neighbors, and GHC staff for making this happen including AIA-Chattanooga, Street Plans, and Chattanooga Design Studio.  Thanks to Sanwell PR and all members of the media who came out and helped share our good news. Check out the video reel by scrolling all the way down!

MEDIA LINKS
WDEF-TV 12 – Glass Street Gateway Improvements
WRCB-TV 3 – Planning By DoingWorkshop Participants Create New Projects for Improvements To Glass Street 
Live With Greg Funderberg – Glass House Collective Uses Community Workshops to Revamp Glass Street

Planning By Doing Workshops for the Glass Street Gateway

How can art alter behavior and perceptions, and improve connections in the Glass Street Gateway area? 

Glass House Collective, in conjunction with our project collaborators,  Chattanooga Design Studio, AIA Chattanooga, and Street Plans, will be hosting Planning-By-Doing workshops to explore ways to improve connectivity, comfort, and access in the Glass Street Gateway area. The “Gateway” is defined as a 5-minute walking radius of the new grocery store coming to Dodson Avenue and Crutchfield Street. 

Five different teams are convening and each is comprised of area residents, artists, design professionals, and local stakeholders. Teams will be assigned a community priority and location within the Gateway to imagine what a safe and inviting Glass Street Gateway might look like. 

The implementation/”doing” phase will come a few weeks after the weekend workshop and will include low-cost ideas that can be implemented quickly this fall. Specific temporary ideas generated in the workshop are called tactical interventions or demonstration projects. Once ideas are finalized and selected, each team will be given a $3,000 budget to implement at least one of their intervention ideas that will help connect neighborhood assets like Hardy Elementary, the East Chatt YFD Center, and the new Save A Lot. These short-term, low-budget projects are a good test for ideas and a way to gather community input for long-term change, making community life more vibrant and healthy. 

Cities around the world are using flexible, artistic, and short-term projects to advance long-term goals related to street safety, enhanced public spaces, and resident participation.

Glass House Collective has been following this process with our neighbors and partners since the organization’s inception. What began several years ago as a creative community engagement process led by Glass House Collective, resulted in more than 300 residents identifying landscaping, safety, and beautification as community priorities in the Glass Street Gateway area. 

CDOT has begun construction on the streetscape design, installing new sidewalks and street trees along Glass Street and Dodson Avenue, which should be complete by May 2021. This weekend you may see team members on a walkabout in different areas of the Gateway as they gather realtime experience and engage in exercises to inspire creative solutions to meet community priorities. 

We can’t wait to see what community-driven plans the teams come up with!