Talking to strangers | Modern shotgun style houses as workforce housing for firefighters in Ketchum, Idaho + playgrounds

I take a lot of photos in public places, or not so public places, and people wondering if I am up to no good challenge me.  Because "I can talk" (your ear off), usually it's not a problem. 

There's an article in the Washington Post, "The mental health benefit of striking up conversations with strangers," about the value in talking with strangers.  For me, it's an opportunity to learn--to interview and interrogate, even if it doesn't seem like it.  From the article:

Nick Epley was commuting to work at the University of Chicago when he looked across the train and wondered: Why are all these people sitting elbow to elbow ignoring each other?

Epley, a professor of behavioral science, thought about how very lonely people are, and he challenged himself to strike up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him. It changed his life — and led him to write the book “A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health and Connection.”

After reading it, I decided to try the experiment myself. For the past month, on my commute to work, at kids’ birthday parties with my daughter, in the elevator at the office and on the street while walking my dog, I’ve been challenging myself to talk to strangers. Would it actually feel good, or just awkward?

I’ve always been a fairly outgoing person, but the idea of talking to strangers and befriending acquaintances still made me feel anxious. As I contemplated opening my mouth to talk to the stranger sitting next to me on a nearly-silent bus, I felt as if my jaw was sealed shut by fear. What if she didn’t want to talk to me? What if I said the wrong thing, or she felt like I was bothering her?

Ever since my involvement in college student government, I can "talk".  This increased manyfold as I got more involved in urban planning.

In my recent playground study for a grant application, I talked to people at "playgrounds," like the "senior" Fitlot at Columbus Center in South Salt Lake.  

Even though it was built with money from AARP, it turns out an Instagram group called  #slc.calisthenics organizes meetups there and at similar sets of equipment, and lots of people of all ages end up using it--part of my observation is that people/kids play with what's there especially when "more appropriate" equipment isn't present.  I saw a four year old doing pull ups on the same set.

I talked to little kids like this one.  She said the monkey bars are her favorite element at playgrounds.  (So did an older boy at a different playground.)  So I aim to have more types of monkey bars present at the playground.

Observations, analysis, and conversations made the application so much stronger.  Going to about 15 different playgrounds in a couple days educated me fast and deeply about playgrounds--including realizing I needed to be there when kids were, because I didn't know how they used certain equipment.

Young children like learning to bicycle on soft surfaces because it doesn't hurt when you fall.

We need wider sidewalks around the playground oval because there is mixed traffic--kids on scooters, bikes, skates, skateboards, adults on bikes (because we have inadequate bike parking, people walking, people sitting to the side, etc.

Greenhorn Fire Station Workforce Housing, Ketchum, Idaho.  When I was taking photos of these buildings at what turned out to be the Greenhorn Fire Station, I learned the back story, which I wouldn't have known otherwise.

I took the photos because I thought the buildings were an interesting interpretation of the New Orleans shotgun style house, and years ago, I helped write a chapter in a book compilation about the type.

618 Jefferson Street, Flickr photo by Elliott Cowand, Jr.

I learned after being challenged, not realizing it was a fire station, and photographers could be would-be terrorists, one of the tenants came out to ask me what I was doing.  As a result, I learned the back story of the complex, for which I would have had no idea about otherwise.

In an area of ever increasing housing costs because of its being a resort area, it's an effort by the North Blaine County Fire District to provide workforce housing.  They rent the land from Idaho DOT, for the Greenhorn Fire Station, and built eight prefabricated units, mostly with donated funds.  

The 870 s.f. units are rented below market rate to tenants who agree to serve as volunteer fire fighters ("Final housing units arrive at Greenhorn Fire Station" Idaho Mountain Express, "Greenhorn Firefighter Housing Fully Occupied," Wood River Weekly).

What an interesting and important project.

Workforce housing and Menards, Minot, North Dakota

The Associated Press reports in "Menard sends state workers to staff booming Minot, N.D., store" (via the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the story is more complete than the version that ran in the Washington Post) that the Menards Home Improvement chain will hire workers in Wisconsin for their new store in Minot, North Dakota, and fly them in for weekly shifts, putting them up at hotels.  (The media has been full of stories about the boom in North Dakota, and shortages of workers and housing, due to the shale oil and gas boom there.)

From the article:

Menard, which has more than 200 stores in the Upper Midwest, said this would be the first time it has ferried in workers by airplane, but it believes jetting in employees for weeklong stints and housing them in hotels “is going to be a permanent solution for as far as we can see.” ...

Businesses struggle to attract workers throughout North Dakota, which has some 22,000 more jobs than takers and the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, at 2.4 percent, Job Service North Dakota data show. The unemployment rate in Minot is 2.3 percent.

Menards is really missing the boat by not building housing above their store in Minot, making the store a mixed use facility.

Years ago, I remember reading about Tesco Supermarket chain in the UK mentioning the cost of worker housing as a limiting factor in their growth, given the prevailing wage rates versus the cost of housing.  And they discussed how, as part of developing their sites, they could build housing above the store, although they wouldn't limit it to workforce housing.  (They have since moved into the mixed use development market, not unlike how retailers in the US often develop shopping centers.)

In DC, Safeway has redeveloped two sites where they'll be part of mixed use projects with residential housing above, and a third site was built this way, but where a Safeway store hadn't been located, at CityVista Downtown.  Plans are to redevelop other Safeway sites in upper northwest DC similarly.  Giant Supermarket will be opening supermarkets on the ground floor of mixed use housing developments in Cathedral Heights, H Street, and the Shaw neighborhoods.

Rendering of the new Safeway + housing development in Petworth, on Georgia Avenue.

A Best Buy, Container Store, and a hardware store are in the old Sears in Tenleytown, and 400+ housing units were built on top of and adjacent to the building.

Flickr photo by NCinDC.

In the Vancouver development The Rise, a Home Depot and a Canadian housewares chain retailer, Winners HomeSense, are located on the first two floors, along with a supermarket, and there are apartments above.


Menards is missing an opportunity to be creative and innovative and solve problems.
Menards image from the Little House on the Corner blog.  I don't have an image of the Minot store.  I don't imagine it's any different from this one.  Granted building housing above would have been more complicated. But given the demand, from their own employees and more generally, they could have developed the project differently, and solved multiple problems simultaneously.