BATH
Bath City Planner Andrew Deci announced that design professionals are coming to Bath in November to help the city look at designing the future downtown to be more resilient to climate change.
Deci said the American Institute for Architects’ Design and Resiliency Team “is coming to Bath in order to see what our community’s concerns are as they relate to changing environment in the downtown, the design of the downtown in general and how we might be able to improve that in the future,” such as constructing buildings to be more resilient. “If we see new development on the waterfront, how should it be built to be more sustainable and resilient into the future,” said Deci.
The evening of the first day, Monday, Nov. 3, there will be a public meeting consisting of a charrette — a facilitated process — and people will explain their issues, concerns and ideas. Those professionals will then take that information and develop plans, ideas, and conceptual designs for how Bath might address those issues, which are then presented back to the public on Wednesday, Nov. 5. Deci said as a result of this project, the city might see changes in construction projects the city runs, changes in the city’s regulations or “it may just be that when a developer comes in to talk to me, I say, ‘Hey, here is a conceptual plan that was developed, what do you think about this?’ And it may be the impetus for them to do something in a slightly different way.”
“In your and my life,” Deci said the city of Bath will see impacts of water rise.
The city last year had a sea level rise study done through the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, “and so we know what the physical impacts are of water on our downtown in particular, and we also actually know the economic impacts, so assuming a lot of different things, there’s a certain economic impact our community would feel if sea level rise takes place.”
Deci said this has been the impetus of getting the DART team to come to Bath. They can look at how to fortify existing buildings and make future buildings more resilient, perhaps raising the finished floor elevation while retaining the feeling and character of buildings today.
“It’s important that as we think about our future, we are thinking about how we make it more resilient to all kinds of things,” Deci said, “environmental change and economic change.”
dmoore@timesrecord.com
THE AMERICAN Institute for Architects’ Design and Resiliency Team “is coming to Bath in order to see what our community’s concerns are as they relate to changing environment in the downtown, the design of the downtown in general and how we might be able to improve that in the future.”
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