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by Rick Stryker
Enrollment is down! Survey cards say that the (fill in the blank with
the name of your most used, oldest building) is awful! We need a new
[whatever it is]! New program space! We need new life! Stoke the fires
and circle the wagons! A capital campaign is in order! Suddenly, there's
a push to build a new facility at camp, and everyone knows that the first
step is to call an architect, right? Bucking conventional wisdom, I say: "Not
so fast!" This month we're looking at a few of the hurdles
that most locations and jurisdictions have in place to ensure safe, healthy,
and environmentally considerate development takes place, as well as proposing
a better sequence to approach these important improvements.
It's important to consider the long-range planning process as
a series of sequential steps. The first step is for the organization
to have a thorough understanding of its mission, its target population
of guests, and its programs, present and future. Only after the organization
has a clear, discrete, and well-defined picture of where its program
is today and where it wants to go, can it consider what facilities are
required to best support that envisioned array of programs. That can
be a difficult, painful process fora camp in transition, but it's
critically important.
Program + Guests = Camp
Hard as it might be for me, an engineer, to admit, "facilities" appears
nowhere in the equation. Facilities exist only to support the program
and its participants. After all, is camp really camp on February 15,
empty and quiet? I suggest not: It's really just property and buildings
waiting for campers. Once the objective of program and facilities are
set, things suddenly become clearer. This critical juncture is where
many organizations go astray. Although the inclination is to find someone
to design the buildings, the next step is not to decide what the program
facilities should look like but where they should go. This process is
universally called "land development."
That term "land development" chafes most of our camp clients.
Their perspective and hope is that their organization and the improvements
which support the program compliment the natural conditions of the property,
in a "leave no trace" sort of mentality. From a practical
standpoint though, concentrating a human population (and all of the activities
that make camp) similarly concentrates the intensity of the use. And
though a camp's landscape is certainly more appealing than a shopping
center and its parking lot, the same regulations shape the appearance
and function of both. Typically, most local governments have two sets
of rules pertaining to land development: zoning and land development.
Before you turn the page because you don't have any such rules
where you are, you might want to think again. Like many, many other rules,
just because you don't know about them doesn't mean they
aren't there. We have always been proponents of asking all the
questions, to try to avoid [expensive] surprises later.
Get in the Zone
Zoning is a local land planning tool by which similar land uses are
grouped in order to promote the best characteristics of each type of
development. The least intense use is normally agriculture and related
uses as well as large, single family lots. At the other end of the spectrum
are the most intense uses: industry and manufacturing. In between those
extremes are all of the other functions that we take for granted, including
shopping (commercial); institutional (churches, hospitals, and schools);
and professional (doctors, etc.). The goal of zoning is to geographically
group like activities for continuity of infrastructure and ease of flow
from one use to another. For example, the constant traffic generated
by a hospital is largely incompatible with the atmosphere and setting
of a single family home neighborhood. Development of different zones
with general purposes attempts to cluster the type and arrangement of
all of the necessary functions to support the community, while protecting
the corporate character. It governs both the type of use as well as the
nature of the improvements that are required to adequately support each
use.
So what's the problem? Let's take a common description "commercial
camp" for an example. As an important aside, nonprofit organizations
are normally in this category since the uses are similar, regardless
of the legal structure of the occupant. Many organizations are discovering
that their operation has been zoned as a "conditional use" for
their location. This means that each modification to the site itself
or its use on that site is subject to local approval at least, and frequently
a public hearing as well. If relations are positive all around, that
may not be a problem. But if your growing program has generated more
traffic on the local roads, you can bet that anyone who's been
driving behind a car full of lost campers will have something negative
to say in that hearing. Will that prevent you from building your whatever?
Probably not. But at the very least, the procedure will delay approval
of the building plans for construction, and similarly delay construction.
In the time lapse, do you lose donor interest? Might you lose momentum
in membership or fund raising drives?
What? More rules?
The second set of local rules addresses the technical
details of installing improvements to the land. These rules can be in
a set of ordinances that speak to each area of development (like roads,
utilities, and storm water) or combined into a single document. The fundamental
premises for these regulations are safety standards and federal mandates
that have been passed to the states to implement. The latter is especially
true with regard to environmental issues including water supply, sewage
disposal, and surface water pollution control (storm water management).
These rules will describe physical dimensions, quantities, and other
requirements for specific types of developments.
Why might that matter to you? Well, let's look at another example:
Does your organization ever rent the dining hall for a wedding reception
or other similar gatherings? The land development regulations will likely
set requirements for (among other things):
- Minimum parking requirements for restaurants and banquet facilities
- Access roadway widths
- Water supply for food preparation, bathroom, and fire protection
needs
- Wastewater treatment works
- Disabled patron access, parking, and facilities
- Separation requirements from shorelines, wetlands, or other water
courses
Although these issues (and all of the others not mentioned) may affect
how you've always done things, the parameters are based on current
law and safety issues that have come to represent a multitude of proven
standards. The plan that everyone loved and that's had a big bucket
of money dedicated to it is suddenly no longer going to come to life
like everyone thought, and getting these details resolved will absolutely
take longer than anyone imagined.
Ah! The Answer!
It should be pretty clear that all of these items are best considered
and resolved at the beginning of the planning process. In truth, that's
what a Comprehensive Plan should provide. It should describe not just
where the leadership wants things to go, but where they can go in accordance
with the applicable regulations. In the very best case, the site plans
are approved by governing agencies even before concept plans are commissioned
for the new building, structure, or program facility. The Comprehensive
Plan places building envelopes for these improvements that serve the
facility and feed into the program. Viewed from overhead on the map,
these are simple rectangles which define the limits of construction for
each improvement, address the overall development issues like water supply,
sewage disposal, parking, access, grading, and storm water. But even
in their simplistic form, they provide the regulators a sufficiently
detailed picture to endorse and approve the long-term plan. This clears
the way for the development of the building plans to go into those envelopes.
Without a doubt, there is a time for an architect to develop building
plans, but house cleaning (from a land development standpoint) should
always be the first order of business. Whether you're planning
to start fresh with a new building in a new site or replace an existing
one, there are probably regulations and rules that will guide decisions
about the building itself. Imagine trying to put your socks on without
removing your shoes first. Difficult? Nearly impossible! Protect your
organization's dreams by purchasing, reading, and digesting these
regulations and then reconciling your organization's existing property
and dreams to the rules that are in place. By better understanding the
land development process, the impact of choices along the way becomes
clearer, the path straighter, and fewer surprises wait.
Originally published in the 2006 November/December
issue of Camping Magazine. |
