ON DESIGNING-Bob Mason

Middlesex Beach Community Design Ad-Hoc Committee

Webmaster's note: Mr. Mason (12 Short Road) attended the board meeting on October 13, 2001 and gave the members his suggestions of how Middlesex Beach could approach the development of a long-term plan or design. He suggested some of the issues that the community should consider in addition to landscaping. The understanding is that members of the board and any members of the Public Works Committee who wish to participate will meet on a date convenient to most of us in the next three or four weeks. Board members: Mark Cyr, Gertrude Pruckmayr, Dave Wiecking. Others: Bob Mason, Carl Swanson (Joe Wolf, consulting only). We will meet Carol Franklin from Andropogon Associates, a well-established, award-winning landscape design group in Philadelphia. The purpose of the meeting is to show Ms. Franklin and associates Middlesex, talk over some of the issues that concern us, and then report back to the board. Is this a firm we would like to help us? Should the board invite their proposal? The Andropogon brochure says that they "bring an ecological perspective to problem solving in landscape architecture.... Projects have included all aspects of site planning and design--form site selection and master planning, to stormwater management, landscape architecture, and vegetation management.... extensive experience in the restoration and management of natural, historical, and degraded landscapes in a wide range of contexts--from nearly pristine areas to disturbed industrial urban sites." They are currently working with the town of Lewes to integrate a new park area along the canal with the town center and to consider how to keep Lewes from being swamped by visitors--a situation not entirely dissimilar from Middlesex's situation in the middle of continuing development.

I believe that if we don’t know where we’re going, we will likely end up somewhere else.  Just as certainly, it is foolish to believe there is a status quo and that we can live in it.  Change is rapid and certain to jerk us around if we aren’t alert to what is happening and able to adapt to it.

Our consideration of some public works actions this last summer pointed up the need to do some planning for Middlesex rather than get along with a series of ad hoc initiatives.  

I prefer the word “design” to “plan.”   The challenge and opportunity is to create an idealized design of what most residents would come to agree Middlesex might be like—what it could look like, what it could be like to live here ten years from now. 

The way to approach this is to suspend our assumptions that Middlesex in the future will be pretty much like Middlesex right now and see if we can visualize the Middlesex   that has most of the qualities we think we would like.  We would do this with a series of discussions, collecting ideas, writing it all down, adding sketches, etc.  Then we would work toward getting a consensus on an idealized design.  The value of this approach is that people get a mental picture which serves to pull thinking and planning along.

Next, we would come back to the real world constraints—the things we have no control over--and see what we can do to work toward our design.  The result is a plan with some priorities and objectives, maybe a time line.  Each time the board considers budget line items or any spending proposal, it asks, “Does this move us in the direction of our design?”  Communication with property owners refers to movement toward the agreed vision for the future.

Some of the issues that could be addressed in the design process could include:

•     Street plan (beach entry, guard house, parking)

•     Landscape (kinds of plants, plantings, maintenance, indigenous vs. other, dune)

•     Beach access (control, facilities)

•     Architectural design of residences (size, style, predominantly rental or full-time residential)

•     Commercial strip (improved design, reducing visual ugliness, acquisition?)

•     Impacts of development near Middlesex (population growth, traffic, sewer, storm drainage, ocean water quality, etc.)

A designer/planner from outside, with appropriate experience, is necessary to achieve this kind of result although we can do much of the surveying and collecting of ideas and other data.




Posted: 10/16/01.