View full sizeSeen here during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Aug. 11, 2011, the recently finished Cottages at Oak Park in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, serve as an example of what developers call "disaster urbanism," which takes into account a need to survive harsh conditions such as hurricanes. These cottages were designed to withstand winds up to 145 mph. (Joshua Dahl, Correspondent)
OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- As north and central Alabama recover from devastating tornadoes, leaders in hard-hit communities there are grappling with how best to provide housing that is both affordable and sturdy.
On the Gulf Coast, where Hurricane Katrina is still fresh in many minds, similar concerns abound.
The Cottages at Oak Park, a recently completed development in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, may offer insight into possible solutions.
Project backers say that the design, construction and financing model for the neighborhood of 29 cottages and detached townhomes could break the mold for post-disaster housing construction.
When U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Biloxi, spoke at the development's ribbon-cutting last month, he described it as "an example of something we should be showing off not just in Mississippi but across the country."
Not least among the project's innovations is the public-private partnership that allowed for its construction.
After Katrina's devastating strike, FEMA set aside $280 million in Mississippi to create a pilot for permanent emergency housing that would be an alternative to temporary trailers.
A portion of the money was designated for Eco-Cottages, structures that would be affordable to occupy after construction thanks to low energy bills.
In a competition for grants, Adam Dial, a partner in the Cottages at Oak Park, was among the winners.
He was able to leverage the funding into a loan to purchase 21/2 acres at the heart of Ocean Springs. The property was, at the time, home to a trailer park.
Money channeled
The grant money couldn't be directly transferred to a private entity, so it was channeled through Mercy Housing and Human Development, an aid agency.
Mercy Housing still technically owns the cottages and townhomes in Oak Park.
The nature of the project's financial underpinning caused bureaucratic headaches, according to Sarah Landry, Mercy Housing executive director. But it also led to a higher-quality end product, she said.
"There was no playbook for this kind of thing," Landry said.
In Alabama, relief officials have struggled with questions of how to replenish the housing stock that spring tornadoes ripped apart.
A total of 23,553 homes were damaged or destroyed, according to Chris Foshee, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response effort in the state. Tuscaloosa's mayor has estimated that the storm wrecked more than 10 percent of the housing in his city.
In Mississippi after Katrina, planners and architects from across the country flooded the coast to lead design charettes, brainstorming sessions where residents and civic leaders collaborated to rethink the look of their communities.
Overwhelmingly, local people wanted communities to be rebuilt on a more human scale, to incorporate mixed-use developments and walkable neighborhoods.
Took heed
View full sizeIn this Aug. 11, 2011, file photo, guests tour the recently finished Cottages at Oak Park in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. The cottages are being held up as a new model of urban design for their ability to withstand harsh conditions. (Joshua Dahl, Correspondent)
Oak Park took the results of those charettes to heart.
Rather than build on the outskirts of Ocean Springs where land is cheaper, Dial and partner Joe Cloyd looked to the center of town, where people could walk, bike or take public transportation to their jobs and daily doings.
The cottages along the development's main street face each other with parking in the rear, another nod to the New Urbanism ethos of people first, cars second.
Across Alabama, communities have held similar recent charettes, with similar results. Tuscaloosa's City Council, for example, recently approved Tuscaloosa Forward, a rebuilding plan that emphasizes compact, walkable village centers.
Bruce Tolar, the architect who designed the ecologically friendly cottages within Oak Park, suggested that Alabama towns and cities consider overhauling their zoning ordinances. Rather than a system that dictates what a property can be used for, he suggested they move to form-based codes, which dictate how developments fit into the built environment.
Traditional zoning systems make developments like Oak Park unnecessarily difficult to accomplish, Tolar said.
The same emphasis on sustainability that went into the design of the development as a whole was put into the individual cottages at Oak Park.
Each cottage was built to withstand winds of up to 145 mph, equivalent to a small EF 3 tornado or a Category 4 hurricane.
Savings
Dial estimated that the extra attention to storm-readiness and energy efficiency added about 5 percent to 10 percent to construction cost. But savings came later. Even though Oak Park is only a mile from the beach, Dial said that he and Cloyd were able to easily obtain insurance on the private market, and at a significant discount, thanks to the quality of the construction.
The insurance turned out to be about 40 percent to 45 percent of their original quotes prior to construction, Dial said.
The cottages also are energy efficient. Tolar said they qualify for Silver level certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, green-building standards.
Energy bills for tenants in the 1,200-square-foot units have been averaging about $75-$85, Dial said.
Cloyd urged the tornado-stricken communities in Alabama to think hard about how they rebuild.
"They have one chance to remake themselves," Cloyd said. "They can do it well, or not so well."
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