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AVOIDING THE BACKLASH

The idea was to have a town square with trees and open space along with a series of restaurants and small shops,” said Ken Ryan, formerly a two-term mayor of Yorba Linda, Calif., and currently a city councilman. “It was to feel comfortable and relaxed, with small-town charm associated with it. The mix of residential would have felt somewhat organic rather than mass-produced.”

Nonetheless, false rumors have plagued Yorba Linda’s town center. In fact, public misperceptions forced the city to cut off talks in February and send everyone back to the drawing board. “The rumors were that we were tearing down Main Street, doing five-story buildings and putting 500 units in that tiny space right on the corner,” Ryan said.

The backlash illustrates a lesson many proponents of New Urbanism have learned the hard way in recent years: However self-evident the public benefits might seem to a developer or urban planner, mixed-use projects can be unfamiliar — even intimidating — to the average citizen. Their scale, density, complexity and, often, use of public financing begs more community outreach, not less.

“Take the Whole Foods, the 95 residential units and the additional retail that we put on one 13-acre block in downtown Sarasota,” said Brett Hutchens, president of Casto Lifestyle Properties, Sarasota, Fla. “If you look at the entitlements that were in place on that land, we’ve actually caused a 2 percent reduction in traffic. But many people don’t understand the nuances of internal capture rates on mixed-use projects,” he said, referring to the reduction in car trips such developments make possible. “They see buildings going up, a new Whole Foods, and think they will create a gridlock problem.”

In the five years since Casto completed its first mixed-use project, the 524,000-square-foot Winter Park Village, Orlando, Fla., explaining such nuances to the public has become a top priority for the firm, says Hutchens.

The setback in Yorba Linda prompted Ryan to develop a new public relations approach that places greater emphasis on flexibility, shared goals, visually engaging public presentations and outreach to stakeholders and the media. “In Yorba Linda,” he said, “we’re going through a lot of lessons learned about outreach and communication and how critical that is.”

— JG