Stage 2 waterfront design contest teams present to public at City Hall

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff

The city of Sandpoint hosted a public meet-and-greet April 12 of the three teams selected to advance into Stage 2 of its downtown waterfront design competition, featuring presentations from three of eight groups who answered the contest solicitation, issued Feb. 21.

“Literally people from all over the world … wanted to be a part of this competition,” said City Council President Kate McAlister, in her introductory remarks. “We are really excited. We can’t wait.”

The three teams selected for Stage 2 included First Forty Feet, with Greenworks, Fehr & Peers, Century West Engineering and North Root Architecture; GGLO +Bernardo Wills, with Welch Comer, Greg Moller, Erin Blue and Sarah Thompson Moore; and Skylab, with PLACE, KPFF, PAE & LUMA, Brightworks and ECONorthwest.

McAlister noted that all three teams include either locally based firms and individuals, or companies that currently or have previously worked on design and development in the Sandpoint area.

“[It] really makes it have a local flavor for us,” she said.

City Hall contracted with Portland-based architect and master planner Don Stastny to manage the competition, who was on hand in person to preside over the presentations April 12 and speak with members of the public.

He framed the contest — one of more than 70 he’s managed around the globe — as an effort to “see the potential of how this community could physically develop to support the culture, arts and community that is here.”

“What we bring to this is an understanding of how you build cities, how you build communities, how you build processes that are transparent,” he said, including public participation and observation.

Of the eight firms that answered the initial submittal solicitation, “there wasn’t a loser among the bunch,” Stastny said, adding, “it was finding the best of the best.”

First up was William Grimm, principal with Portland, Ore.based First Forty Feet — whose name keys into the notion that “the most important space of any city, of any town, is the first 40 feet up from a building and first 40 feet out in space into the street,” Grimm said.

He emphasized that First Forty Feet is centered on “people and public life,” noting that the team includes historians, anthropologists, landscape architects and other designers, including a special interest in transportation.

Members of the team include GreenWorks — which has done streetscape design work for the city in the past — as well as Spokane-based Century West Engineering (whose Sandpoint office is led by Ryan Luttmann); Fehr & Peers, which is currently working with the city on the “East-West Connection” concept for U.S. Highway 2; and North Root Architecture, led by local Sandpoint architect Reid Weber.