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Residents weigh in beyond the buzzword
By Catherine Billey
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
 View of the Dave & Roma McCoy Learning Center at the Cerro Coso Community College. The campus building is currently used for performing arts, such as the Felici Trio. Although the word "placemaking" has floated around numerous recent town meetings, usually emerging from the lips of Community Development Director Mark Wardlaw, a variety of Mammoth Lakes residents appoached for their personal opinion on the subject didn't yet know what it means.
The term isn't just another buzzword. It was coined in the idealistic 60s by William (Holly) Whyte and Jane Jacobs who developed unique ideas about designing cities that catered to people, not just cars and shopping centers, creating places that are pleasurable and interesting.
But placemaking is equally relevant to smaller towns, such as Mammoth Lakes, where residents desire places where they can meet other people in convivial and stimulating settings.
The Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit organization founded in 1975 and inspired by the ideas of Whyte, is dedicated to helping people turn their public spaces into vital community places.
Components of placemaking can include such things as parks with pathways, skating rinks, inviting benches, viewscape, a lessening of vehicle space, stairs designed to be sat upon, a variety of attractive buildings, gazebos, etc.
What might the concept of placemaking mean in Mammoth? A handful of residents were eager to weigh in for this piece. While some interviewed did not want to go on the record because they were unfamiliar with the term or considered it a buzzword, others had specific and constructive ideas about placemaking in Mammoth.
Placemaking starts at home
For Antoine Kaufman, five-year resident of Mammoth and crepe concessionaire at Canyon Lodge, placemaking starts in the home.
"For me, placemaking is people coming over to our house and we discuss things. That's placemaking because we always talk about the town and what we would like to see happening."
He said there's a need in Mammoth for places where people can gather in a convivial atmosphere and take that discussion outside the home. It would help if Mammoth had a better bus system, he added.
Minimum to zero car tolerance
"We have to think about a way where we don't use cars, where cars are outside the town," Kaufman suggested, "and you have a couple of shuttles that are very well done. We can go green and somehow be the flag for the American way of what is going to happen in the next 10 or 20 years."
Kaufman noted that the logistics of it would be tricky – many people resist parking their cars and lugging bulky ski items on alternative transportation – but with some application and goal of "zero car tolerance," Mammoth might someday emerge as a flagship green community.
Integrating culture
and recreation
For Kendra Knight, an eight-year resident of Mammoth and Ski Museum Director/Curator, placemaking is about the integration of culture and recreation.
"To me, being on the arts commission, placemaking would be more of a cultural arena and epicenter that we can develop in Mammoth in order to gain more of the educated and cultured visitors to Mammoth. This is a destination for culture as well as a ski resort. I'd like to see Mammoth be a cultural destination, and for people to come and see that as well as to recreate."
Capitalizing on what
we already have
The ideal site for a performing arts center could be Cerro Coso Community College, said Bea Beyer, a 37-year resident of Mammoth and educator, "instead of building a multi-billion dollar structure elsewhere." She said placemaking in Mammoth should be about capitalizing on what already exists in the community, instead of always starting from scratch.
"Utilize what we already have," she mused. "We could certainly capitalize on using the college more for community forum kinds of activities, not just music and performance, but discussions on various issues or guest speakers, that kind of thing. I know they do sometimes, and certainly the Felici Trio events are fabulous. But it seems to me that we could do far more of that nature."
College in transition
According to Deanna Campbell, director of the Eastern Sierra Center, Cerro Coso Community College, the college has recently taken a much larger role. "We've done a lot of events. We've had some black tie fundraisers, we've done the Felici Trio of course, and most recently with the [November] election, the High School Government AP class hosted a presentation about all of the presidential candidates open to the community." The students linked the candidates positions to local politics in an event that drew about 25 people.
The new campus housing wing has turned out to be a microcosmic example of placemaking. "I've heard from a number of students and their parents that there really is a campus feel now with Cerro Coso which didn't exist up here in Mammoth before," Campbell said. "Students are around, they're studying in the lobby, they're meeting on campus."
Creating more
pedestrian access
But right now, unfortunately, the college is an island, Campbell said, because there isn't sufficient pedestrian access to the campus. "We are working with the town on a grant to actually put in a commuter bike pathway from Meridian at the library through the campus past the housing and back onto the bike trails that are in existence," she noted.
Associate town manager Karen Johnston is heading up the grant proposal for the bike pathway, Campbell said.
For now, however, there are no crosswalks, traffic lights, or sidewalks leading to the campus. "That really creates a difficult challenge in creating the college as a gathering place. And in winter, of course, that's compounded. So that would be very important."
Slowing traffic down
Campbell also suggested that placemaking involves slowing down so that people actually experience the environment. A key challenge in Mammoth is the Main Street/Highway 203 entrance that detrimentally acts like a freeway.
"That's a very clear example of why we have a challenge of creating place in Mammoth – because people are speeding down a 4-lane road at 55 miles per hour and mimicking a freeway experience rather than a place experience. It's a means to get to one place from another, rather than being in a place. So I agree with narrowing the roads, reducing the number of lanes, reducing traffic speed and flow, and creating more pedestrian acesss." That also includes bicycles and skis in the winter.
"It slows you down and requires you look and stop and be in a place rather than moving through it."
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