Dixie Transforming

In May 2007, the town of Convent, Louisiana received bad news.  After months of making plans, drafting agreements, and putting together incentive packages, it found out it would not be the chosen home for a new ThyssenKrupp steel manufacturing plant. Instead, the German metals conglomerate chose a site in Calvert, Alabama, 225 miles to the northeast.  For the short term, it seemed Convent’s landscape would remain limited to the familiar vocabulary of sugar cane fields, petrochemical plants, refineries, and grain elevators.

The scraped landscape along Alabama's Tombigbee River - new home to ThyssenKrupp steel.

SketchUp rendering of Alabama steel mill. Photo credits: http://www.thyssenkruppnewusplant.com/careers.aspx

Convent and the Parish of St. James were hard struck by the announcement.  So much effort, consensus building, money, and man hours had gone into making the case that Convent was an ideal place for this kind of industrial investment.  Now, not only were officials and citizens out time and money it took to make their ill-fated application, they had nothing to show for it – the most important being jobs – ThyssenKrupp pledged the creation of 2,700 high paying jobs once the facility was operational, and thousands upon thousands of construction-related jobs.

For St. James Parish, population 20,000 in the 2000 U.S. Census, ThyssenKrupp’s presence promised big change.  The plant would have made Convent a regional job center for Louisiana, bringing a bigger tax base, improved services, and expanded economic opportunity to a struggling area of the state.  It suggested new thinking about St. James’ economic landscape – an exchange of agricultural jobs for higher-paying manufacturing jobs serving ever-expanding global markets.  Each new ThyssenKrupp job was expected to pay $50-60K per year, an astounding jump from the $35,277 median household income for St. James Parish.

In the three years since the rejection, Convent and St. James Parish have stayed focused on marketing the area’s potential to other investors.  News announced this week by Republican Governor Jindal and Nucor Steel, an American steel manufacturer, describes plans for another steel manufacturing facility, with jobs paying on average $75K per year plus benefits.  Nucor’s plant hits additional efficiency targets using production techniques that create less greenhouse emissions than the proposed ThyssenKrupp complex.  The phased project could ultimately bring 1,250 jobs to St. James Parish (500 jobs in the first phase).

Proposed site for Nucor's newest American steel plant in St. James Parish.

What kind of incentives did Louisiana have to offer to ultimately get Nucor’s bid?  The state approved $600 million in tax exempt bonds that will cover the capital costs of building the first phase of the project.  Additional payments and incentives depend on the company’s ability to meet state-mandated minimum targets for payroll and investment.  The website steelguru.com states: “one of the surprising aspects of the deal is that Nucor, rather than the state, will pay for a river port terminal upgrade. Also, the state is not guaranteeing major infrastructure improvements for roads and site preparation.”

Reader do note the significance of these remarks about incentive packages.  From previous experiences courting investment, states have learned it makes little fiscal sense to sell the state out in the short term for a project whose promise depends on decades of sustained growth.  Although the desire to create jobs cannot be overstated, states should know better than to get in over their heads in these tenuous times.  Sustainable economic development – the kind of growth that does not compromise the potential of future generations — requires a proportionate balance of risks, benefits, and costs among and between participants.

Many of us have experienced the romantic allure that is part of a tropical island vacation: the excitement of an exotic landscape, clear blue waters, sounds of strange birds (maybe monkeys), the smell of lush vegetation, and the feel of the sun that seems so much closer than it does at home.  Islands and exotic beaches are some of the most popular vacation destinations for all these reasons and more.

Most likely, unless you are extremely rich, you will not be the lone castaway on a barren beach, plucking coconuts off a tree, swaying in a hammock, or spearing barracuda fish.  Sorry to disrupt your fantasy, but the hard, cold reality of mainstream island vacation-making means the place needs to be ready to receive crowds of tourists.  We now learn the critical word of the day: i-n-f-r-a-s-t-r-u-c-t-u-r-e.  There.  I said it. Your fruity-umbrella-drink dream is over.  Sorry about that.  And it will still cost you, so keep reading.

Islands these days are not complete without a cruise ship terminal.

Infrastructure.  There needs to be a big enough airport, wide enough roads, large enough parking lots, and enough rental cars to get us out-of-towners around an island.  To enjoy ourselves once we’ve checked into our hotels, we need to have accessible beach walks, clear signage, pest management programs, erosion control, rental facilities, and lifeguard stations.  It goes to say that we might even need a Walmart.  All these things are required to have fun while we’re on vacation, right?  Ummm, yep.   Sadly, the result of all these described “necessities” is an island that resembles something more like home than we’d like to admit to ourselves and our pocketbooks.

So is there an alternative?  Can we actually “get away from it all” in our modern times?

Glad to answer that for you.  Yes, there is an alternative – and you don’t even have to completely abandon your expectations for luxury and service!  Room rates at the Greyfield Inn span from $395 to $595 per night with a two night minimum, and you’ll have to make your reservations at least six months in advance if you want one of the cheaper rooms.  The fee includes your meals and use of bikes, so don’t grumble too much!  If the price is a tad high, as I suspect it may be, there is a $4 per night alternative.  You will need to bring your camping gear and tick tweezers, though. Two choices for two different groups of people.  Makes sense so far.

This is where the elite classes stay on Cumberland Island. Greyfield was a former vacation "cottage" for a Carnegie descendant.

Once the accommodation question is resolved, you can start to think about that island experience I describe at the beginning of this post — an experience where people are rare, animals are abundant, you are aware of the “ecosystems” around you, roads are made of only sand, and 17-miles of undeveloped coastline await you.  Paradise, right?

Welcome to Cumberland Island National Seashore: a place where you begin to understand the limitations of being a human being.

There is a lot to do on Cumberland Island, but you have to plan ahead to do much of it.  At the camping orientation, given twice a day by the NPS rangers, scary pictures are painted of wry visitors who failed to acknowledge their physical limitations: snake bites, alligator attacks, groin tick infestations, poison ivy, sunburn, heatstroke, nausea, and feral horse bites.  It gets even gorier, but I’ll save you from it because I’d like you to actually consider going to this place at some point.

A first day on the island will usually involve walking as far as you can go around the island’s southern attractions.  This experience helps orient you to what your feet are capable of and how many pounds you can carry in your backpack.  Walking on sand is not an efficient thing to do, so if you are planning on going more than a few miles, you should practice a little bit beforehand.  You can also interact with armadillos and roaming wild turkeys and scruffy equines.

At first glance, they look pretty, but then you notice their ribs and their scarred tick bellies. The fat horse on the left is pregnant.

Day two might involve testing your endurance a little bit more.  On my recent travels to Cumberland Island, I had the big idea to rent a bike and go 17 miles to the First African Baptist Church.  This is the church where JFK Jr. married Caroline Bessett.  Yes, I am a celebrity stalker, I admit it, but who isn’t?  There are plenty of other things to see on the way to the church, which happens to be the last outpost on the northerly tip of the island.  Sounded like a good plan, but then I realized there’s an 17 mile return trip to get back to camp.  That’s a 34 mile bike trip on sand – using a wonky rental bike – I admit I was having doubts.

I discussed my supply needs with the ranger on duty (the one that scared us at the orientation).  He suggested I would need 10 bottles of water to get there and back.  That’s about a gallon of water!  Needless to say, the bike ride would end up being slower than I thought it would be.

Long story short, the bike ride did not require a whole gallon of water.  Weather conditions were nearly perfect – cloudy, 72F, breezy.  I drank about 5 or 6 of those 10 bottles of water.  In lieu of so much water, I should have taken more food and possibly a weapon.  On my way back, I ran into a wandering, lone feral stallion on the narrow sand road.  The darn horse had me in a standoff.  All I had to defend myself were a couple of oversize pinecones.  It was pathetic.  The take away message that day was you should not underestimate the scariness of an island’s feral wildlife.  Full of ticks, a scarred belly, bony ribs and back, oozing eyes and patchy hair – that horse was a piece of work.

This is a view of the "main road" about 13 miles north of my campground. The main road runs the full length of Cumberland Island and you'll need a 4WD vehicle to get there without a bike.

Traveling in this manner across Cumberland Island a person becomes very oriented to the landscape.  The nuances of the maritime forest are beautifully revealed, and the experience changes as the sunlight hits different parts of the foliage.  In most places on Cumberland Island, the predominant duo-culture is the saw palmetto and the southern live oak.  As you move north, you see an occasional pine tree.  Soon, these loblolly pines outnumber the oaks.  Later, you notice small wirey stands of long-leaf pine, an endangered native pine of Georgia.

Long leaf pine trees grow differently than other pines. They are a native Georgian pine species and increasingly rare.

Sound is one of your biggest experiential informants: the rustling noises in the fallen leaves is most likely an armadillo rooting around with its nose.  Bird song is ever present, and after a couple days, you’ll even forget the sound a crow makes.  At night, you hear the ghostly whinnies of wild horses moving through the roadway areas as they make their way to new grazing territory.  It is no surprise that the wildlife is one of the main reasons visitors come to Cumberland Island.  You interact more with animals than you do with people here.  For me, having grown up on a hobby farm, it is a reminder of my childhood – only the animals are a little bigger and fiercer.

The experience on Cumberland Island has nothing to do with island vacations you’ll find elsewhere.  Only a few other places in the United States can offer this kind of visceral experience where the landscape envelopes you so completely.  You aren’t provided for, save for running water at a few numbered locations.  You can only go as far as your feet or bike can take you.  You are responsible here.  That means you carry out each item of waste that you bring on the island.  Your care of the island is reflected in the pristine condition of the landscape.  To do this well, you act within a common ethic of stewardship that links you to the well-being of the creatures and plant communities around you.  Do you do that when you go to Hawaii, or when you pull into dock on your cruise ship on St. Thomas?

There is something to be said for “roughing it”.

Before two days ago, I’d never set a foot in Manteo, NC.  But arriving there on Friday evening,  I knew exactly what I should look for and where to go.  Not once did I make a wrong turn.  I even knew where to find the post office (at the Chesley Mall).  It was a strange feeling, indeed.

This town of 1000 or so people is a place most students of landscape architecture and city planning at UC Berkeley are very familiar with.  We use the town as a case study of community design and planning in classes taught by Randy Hester and Marcia McNally.

Located on Roanoke Island, about 8 miles from the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Manteo suffered decades of decline after the Outer Banks highway project bypassed the town.   In the early 80s, Prof. Hester and his wife Marcia McNally began working there with NCSU students on a plan for the town’s economic and physical revival.  The fruits of their labors are evident today in Manteo, which offer residents and tourists a sense of traditional village life along the NC coast.  Click here to look at my Manteo photo album.

The purpose of my visit to Manteo was mainly to resolve a deep curiosity I’ve had about the place since I first learned about it five years ago.   The town’s struggle to find a balance between tourism and its historic economic drivers (fishing, boat building) also seemed a good fit for my fellowship project.

My Manteo visit took place during what people in the tourist trade call the “shoulder season” – the sweet spot between high season and the off season.  The shoulder season in Manteo means that you will not encounter crowds.  You can find parking in a snap.  Hotels want to give you 3 for 2 offers (stay 3 nights for the price of 2).  Though few restaurants are open, the ones that are serving are pleased to see you.  Out on the boardwalk, absent the throngs of out-of-towners, I was able to clearly observe how locals use public spaces in Manteo.

Conversations I overheard tended to reflect on slow pace of things around town, but how it will all change “just like that, after Memorial Day.”  I observed several group of rambunctious teenagers making the most of the cold afternoon, playing tag and defending their turf from each other – some kids were grouped at the corner of Jule’s (Bicentennial) Park and others congregated out on the lighthouse pier.  For readers here who have not studied Manteo, then none of this stuff probably reads very interesting.  But if your curiosity has been tickled, just click here to find out for yourself.

In many post-industrial cities of the American South there is measurable excitement when the terms “life science”, “biotech” or “nanotech” are mentioned.

Southern cities that have experienced a difficult transition period out of manufacturing are today optimistic about a future that embraces science-based jobs.  Cities are partnering with their universities to embark on ambitious development endeavors that not only create new places for academic research, but also places that serve broader economic development goals.  As state and private universities try to address the need for physical expansion in an environment of endemic budget cuts, they find themselves simultaneously courting investment and resources from the private sector.

The result of the courtship is the well-publicized “research and technology park”.  With a start in 1950′s at the Research Triangle Park (a collaborative effort between cities and universities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina) the newest technology parks are marketing themselves as a lifestyle choice, not simply stand-alone employment centers.  Design of the research park campus now addresses issues never previously considered such as walkability, schools, energy sustainability, reuse of the urban fabric, pedestrian environment, mass transit, and access to consumer and lifestyle services.

Although traditional industrial parks still thrive, as seen in Chattanooga’s Enterprise South Industrial Park, campuses that focus on bioscience and related technologies appear to have a greater growth potential.  Cities in North Carolina (Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Raleigh and Chapel Hill) have taken steps to build their life and biosciences sectors through partnering with their most prestigious academic institutions.  Even the state’s land grant and historically black colleges and universities are getting in on the action.  The University of NC  at Greensboro and the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University recently unveiled the Gateway University Research Park where a Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering will be located.  University officials expect that over the next 20 years, Gateway University Research Park will contribute $250 million to the economy of the region.

One the Gateway’s web site the following is written:

“This novel joint venture between NCA&T and UNCG is designed to facilitate collaborations between world-class researchers and businesses – to move scientific discoveries from the lab to the marketplace benefitting the local community, region, and North Carolina by transforming cutting-edge intellectual properties into thriving business ventures.”

This week I will meet with a former mayor of Chapel Hill and both the campus architect and landscape architect of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to hear and see work in progress on Carolina North.  Carolina North is how UNC Chapel Hill plans to expand its physical boundaries and cultivate the economic sectors with the greatest potential for growth in the region.  These individuals, among many others, played key roles in laying the groundwork between the Town of Chapel Hill and UNC to meet mutual growth goals.  They are also the key informants on how this research campus will eventually look, feel, and function.  Carolina North’s design aspires to be a model for sustainable building for the entire region.

It’s 8:30 PM and I am getting comfortable in my room.  This inn happens to be a converted school building, where children of coal miners went to both elementary and high school.  The place reminds me of Portland’s Kennedy School, minus the big crowds, bars, and outdoor seating.  In Washington, DC, an old grade school on Capitol Hill was converted into a fitness gym.  Both are extremely successful private investments.  While I shake my head at the closing of urban schools, I do welcome the fact these buildings are getting a second chance to contribute to urban life in two of America’s finest cities.   (Er, three finest cities, including Benham!)

I believe locals see the Benham School House Inn with the same degree of success.  With this inn, the town has the capability of hosting larger gatherings or meetings, weddings, and the odd out-of-towner such as myself.  Heck, I’d be staying off the interstate in a SleepInn if not for Benham’s fine centrally located accommodations.  My only complaint is that there wasn’t an obvious shop I could buy a snack from when I rolled in around 4:30pm.  You get what you can, I guess!

Tomorrow I meet with Carl Shoupe, a retired coal miner and currently a member of Benham’s city council.  His work is promoting sustainable initiatives in Benham, as well as campaigning against mountain top removal mining.  Look forward to having breakfast with him in the A.M.