real estate & development in the northern rockies

When Architecture and Development Account for the Environment

By Greg Lemon, 10-26-07

	Don MacArthur of MMW Architects discusses the innovative design of Missoula's Good Food Store as part of his talk on architecture and the community at NewWest.Net's Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference. Photo by Anne Medley.

Community development must respond to the environmental pressures and dangers existent in the world today.

It’s a broad statement and encompasses so many aspects of life: food, transportation, and housing. But this is also a statement that is crucial for communities in the West to understand as they continue to grow, said Don MacArther, founding partner in MacArthur, Means and Wells Architects in Missoula.

MacArthur spoke on innovative designs in community development at the NewWest.Net conference, but he started his discussion with an overview of the reasons community development must change.

The trend now is obvious—housing developments are moving further and further from urban centers. This is eating up farmland and, in an time when global warming is accepted as an imminent threat, is making people more and more dependent on cars.

We might not be changing our development patterns today, but if we don’t soon the price of gas, food, and global warming will make a change necessary, MacArthur said.

“We have to think about long-term vision, both within our local environment and within the global forces.”

For one thing, if the world hasn’t reached peak oil production yet, all signs point to that happening soon. When it does gas will begin to drastically increase in price. We’re not going to be able to import food from China, we’re not going to be able to drive miles to work or to the store, we’re not going to afford to live in our large homes.

MacArthur provided some options for change—ideas that he has suggested and implemented in the Missoula area.

One idea was an intense residential redevelopment of the south end of Brooks Street in Missoula. MacArthur’s idea would be to greatly increase the number of dwelling units per acre in the area by building condominiums and small single-family homes. This redevelopment could be centered around a new small rail system that would allow residents to move away from a car-centered lifestyle.

He also showed several slides of projects his firm has designed and built around Missoula. They ranged from single-family homes, to condominiums, to redevelopment projects including residential apartments and commercial structures, namely Missoula’s popular Good Food Store.

The Good Food Store in particular is an example of how redevelopment can rejuvenate and heal a community. There it’s not just in the structure, which was redeveloped from a standard, old style grocery store, but the store also works with local farmers to market their produce.

Another project his firm developed was Orchard Gardens, which is a diverse development on more than four acres on the edge of Missoula. The overall development is about eight housing units per acre, but it’s clustered on about two acres. The rest of the ground was set aside for an orchard and community garden.

The buildings were all constructed with green material, including local timber products, recyclable materials, as well as being extra energy efficient, MacArthur said.

The sum of his presentation was that development must quit looking to reach further and further out from the cities, but be forward enough looking to find ways to limit the use of fossil fuels, utilize recycled and recyclable material, and think about how the development fits into the landscape. We need to stop developing agriculture land that will eventually have to be utilized for local food. And building idyllic small ranches is out of the questions.

“I do not believe that in this future we can believe that we’re going to create ranchettes in our rural areas. There’s just no place for it,” MacArthur said

These changes must take place in spite of market demands for homes.

“If we follow what the market demands right now we’re going to be too late,” he said.

Stay tuned to NewWest.Net/RealEstate for more coverage from the second annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference October 25 and 26.

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