| Spotlight on Valley, Ala.
Jean Williams remembers the day she was driving through her Valley, Ala., neighborhood and looked up to find her former Girl Scout hut, a fond memory from childhood, had been destroyed.
 "It was such a shock. I remember driving around the corner and my Girl Scout house was gone. It had been completely demolished and the lot was cleaned off. And I just stopped the car and cried because I was so heartbroken that it was gone," she said.
The hut and many of the town's other buildings from theaters to schools to churches had been built by the large textile mills that settled in the area following the Civil War. Life quickly became centered around the mills as four prominent mill villages, later incorporated into the city of Valley, sprung up surrounding each manufacturing plant.
But the exodus of the textile industry nearly 40 years ago left many buildings - like the Girl Scout hut - in a path of destruction as the town fought for its economic footing and an opportunity to redefine itself.
The event prompted Williams and others from this East Alabama hamlet to form a historical commission to save the buildings that defined their childhoods and represented the prosperity of a town once dominated by the booming textile industry.
While other buildings in Valley managed to escape the fate of Williams' cherished hut, civic leaders saw the event as a wake-up call and knew they had to form a plan to refocus their efforts after the textile mills, which were once the area's main economic industry, left town.
 In 1998, Martha Cato, Valley's city clerk, sought the assistance of Auburn University's Urban Studio, an outreach program of AU's College of Architecture, Design and Construction that gives fifth-year students opportunities to pursue design in an urban setting and engage in community projects. Cheryl Morgan, the Studio's director, led a team of students, volunteer professionals and the citizens of Valley through a design charrette, an architectural term describing an intense team study of a problem that requires a design solution.
Completed in 1999, the charrette has been the roadmap for Valley's growth for the past eight years driving every decision from planting willow trees to enhance the town's appearance to purchasing two of the abandoned textile mills for future commercial and residential development.
 "The charrette process has been important to the lifeblood of our city," said Valley Mayor Arnold Leak. "The Urban Studio has been extremely helpful to us because they provided us with another point of view and with the technology and ideas that we need to progress. It's the secret of us being able to see a future, where one time all we saw was a half-empty glass.
"Through an assets-based planning process, the charrette helped Valley's leaders identify their area's best resources or prime locations: primarily the Chattahoochee River, 14 miles of which run through town, and the abandoned Langdale and Riverdale textile mills, also located along the river.
"They didn’t think of the river as an asset and an economic tool and after our visit they began to recognize things that they could build on in their community that were inherent," Morgan said. "And unlike the textile mills that were part of the economy for years, the river can't be outsourced."
Leak said this change in perception regarding the river has been a catalyst that led the city to purchase the two mills and expand on many of the charrette’s long-range plans.
"The river was there and we always knew it was there, but it took somebody else to tell us how important it was," he said. "We used to call it 'the big dirty ditch in the backyard.' It’s amazing how different something looks when you put on different colored glasses, and the design charrette was able to give us a new set of glasses."
And the mills, which for a time had symbolized despair and defeat, have now rekindled a hope and excitement for new things to come.
 "We see the Langdale Mill as having the potential to be a very vibrant part of our long term goals for the city - economic development, historical preservation, eco-tourism," said Jim Jones, a member of Valley's City Council. "With plans to convert the mill into a hotel and conference center with retail stores and other mixed-use development, we feel it has the potential to be a thriving part of our economy."
In fact, a second design charrette, focusing solely on utilizing the Langdale Mill has already been completed.
Jones said the city intends to use the Chattahoochee to boost eco-tourism as a draw for boaters, kayakers and fishermen. There are also plans to establish a walking trail between the two mills along the river bank. The city has utilized the old railroad bed, originally built to connect the mills by train, by converting it into a seven-mile hiking and biking trail.
Valley's citizens have also worked hard to have 1,200 of their community's structures added to the National Register of Historic Places as well as each of the four mill villages. And, there are plans to one day open a textile museum, possibly in Langdale Mill, telling of the town's rich history and once textile-dependent lifestyle.
With the automaker Kia building a new plant in nearby West Point, Ga., the charrette has also served as a guide for a recent housing boom. There are currently 1,500 new housing units being built in a town whose population is estimated at 9,200.
Officials in Valley speak with a lot of pride not only about their town's history but also about the possibilities for its future.
"Our love for our heritage and our history is very important to us," said Cato. "But we are also a progressive city and the Urban Studio's design charrette has been instrumental in helping us reinvent ourselves." |
