HAGERSTOWN, MD. ? The ghosts of industry haunt downtown Hagerstown.

Just two blocks from the city center, between the restored Maryland Theatre and manicured City Park, heaps of scrap metal sit rusting beside a gridiron-sized vacant lot. The space, ringed by old factories, contractors’ offices, light manufacturing plants and modest rental housing, is a stain of weeds and asphalt that stubbornly resists development.

Revitalizing this blighted, 25-acre southside neighborhood would take a multidisciplinary dream team – and it’s on its way. Hagerstown is among eight U.S. communities chosen last month by the American Institute of Architects to be assigned a volunteer crew of experts who will design a solution to a nagging problem.

Problem solvers

Starting this spring, each community will be visited by its own team of architects, planners, hydrologists, economic development specialists and other experts from across the nation who will work for a year with a local steering committee. Their goal is a plan that will solve the project’s environmental, economic and social challenges without sacrificing the welfare of future generations, according to the AIA.

The projects are as varied as their locations: an industrial park in New Orleans; growth management in Longview and Guemes Island, Wash.; watershed protection in northern Nevada; heritage preservation in Lawrence, Kan.; community networking in Syracuse, N.Y.; and ecological tourism development in northern Michigan.

“What’s common among the communities is that they’re really focused on figuring out where they stand today in terms of being a sustainable community and on what steps they can take to become more sustainable,” said Ann Livingston, director of the AIA’s Center for Communities by Design in Washington.

“Sustainable” is a word used often in the group’s materials. Sharon Disque, who heads the steering committee for the Hagerstown project, prefers plainer language.

“What we’re looking for is a strategy that doesn’t say, ‘Demolish everything and build anew.’ What we’re looking for is integrating what works here with targeted demolition and also development of those open areas,” she said.

Changing dynamics

The factories and warehouses once served by three rail lines crossing Hagerstown have moved out to near interstates 70 and 81, which intersect southwest of town. Disque said the “brownfield” they left behind could be redeveloped if the site’s multiple owners and community planners could agree on a plan.

Disque, an economic development specialist, is executive director of Hagerstown Neighborhood Development Partnership Inc., a nonprofit group with public and private participation. She said the neighborhood’s proximity to City Park, which is visible from the vacant lot, is what made the Southside Revival Project attractive to her board members.

“They saw it as a way to connect downtown to City Park,” Disque said.

She said some have suggested building a landscaped, mini-boulevard through the vacant lot.

“It’s close enough to the central business district that by changing the use here and adding residential and small business, we can actually change the market dynamics for the central business district. If you add residents, you add customers for restaurants and shops.”

Small expense

But Disque said the steering committee is wide open to the AIA process, which includes public meetings with the design team. “There’s so much public participation that we think we’ll have hundreds of ideas,” she said.

The AIA dream team comes at a cost. Each participating community must contribute at least $5,000 to match a $15,000 grant from the institute. That’s a small expense compared with the $70,000 that Disque said a consultant would charge.

This is the second year of the AIA program. Last year’s communities included Logan, Utah, which is implementing some of the team’s recommendations for improved regional growth planning, said Jay Nielson, director of community development.

He said the collaboration “provided the glue to focus attention on issues that everyone has known about for a long time but had not previously been able to address. It brought together people with outside objectivity that understood our concerns regarding traffic efficiency and environmental quality control surrounding new building development.”