North Branch Historic District (New Jersey)

Transcription

Male Singer: I saw grey skies, foreboding and cold, I saw grey skies that gave every gold. Now those skies aren't so- John Gronen: Three years ago, what you see here today, and this play that's kind of staged, that they're rehearsing now and they're getting ready for this play production, this is not something you would have seen a couple of years ago. And we have so much fabric in our urban core that's walkable. The infrastructure is in place. This just makes all the sense -- Nancy Gronen: Yeah. John Gronen: -- sense in the world. Nancy Gronen: And there's nothing more sustainable than the reuse of an existing building, right? Roy Buol: This space used to be the largest millworking district in the United States, right here on the Mississippi River. Over a million square feet of usable space, much of which was vacant and abandoned. And this building here is the first of many buildings that we're hoping to restore. It has 72 residential units in it. And the lowest level -- the first floor and the basement level -- is for retail and commercial space. Teri Goodman: But look at this kind of original material. I mean, where would you find that today? I mean, this just doesn't exist. And we figure -- we calculated the amount of energy we saved by not deconstructing these buildings, because they would fill landfills. They would fill whole cells of landfills. Roy Buol: This whole Millwork District, I think, is a great example of smart growth. You look at the 72 apartments in this building here, for instance. Well, the more people you can put into buildings like this, the less green space you're turning into residential areas. John Gronen: This is a restored building, but what gives it its content are the tenants that are here, whether it's the food co-op that's going to be here in four months, or the studio works, and the art gallery, and, you know, the solar energy company that's here. Roy Buol: Some of the federal funding that we had that really assisted us in this was the EPA Brown Fields Grant. This is obviously a very old section of town, and we had a lot of issues that we had to deal with. The basements were flooded in all these buildings. All the water comes off the bluffs, and this is where it pools. So, that's another part of the project that we're working on in the city of Dubuque, is to get rid of this rain water with our Bee Branch Creek Restoration Project. Teri Goodman: This is the confluence of the Bee Branch Creek and the Mississippi River. And, in 1858, as a result of flash flooding on the north side of Dubuque, several people were killed. And so the city decided to bury this Bee Branch Creek underground in a sewer. So, as a result, we've had significant flooding every other year for 12 years. And so now we have decided as a community to daylight the creek. This is going to be a significant improvement to this community for hundreds of years. It's really going to address a significant flooding problem in the Washington neighborhood and on our north end. It's also going to improve water quality for the Mississippi River. And it's going to reintroduce green space into some of our oldest, most historic neighborhoods. Roy Buol: So, you can see, by taking this lower piece of this building, this connection here, out, we've opened up the space to what was a historic Washington neighborhood. It really, again, is that connection; connecting that older neighborhood with this new redeveloped Millwork District, and our downtown, and the Port of Dubuque. It's just going to be a very vibrant residential working neighborhood. I can remember sitting at the council table in the 1990s. The comment was made that people will never live downtown in the city of Dubuque. They won't live there and work there. And I think, as a community, we showed that if you can develop the infrastructure -- you know, take your historic buildings, rehab those so that it's a welcoming space -- you can attract people downtown to live. [end of transcript] HHS: 091010 More Magazine Interview 2 1/30/14 EPA: 2014 01 05 SmartGrowth Dubuque v7 1 1/30/14 Prepared by National Capitol Captioning 200 N. Glebe Rd. #1016 (703) 243-9696 Arlington, VA 22203 Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd. #1016 (703) 243-9696 Arlington, VA 22203