Four Corners Design Competition

Designs That Unite Our Growing City

   The Collier County museum’s treasure trove of visual glimpses into Naples’ growth from infancy to maturity reveals the likes of a doting parent who captures a child’s Kodak moments for a family album. The cherished scrapbook of recorded history provides a valuable timeline of the pivotal moments and important decisions that influenced Naples’ growth including a notable moment that came in the late 1880s when a group of Tallahassee businessmen founded the Naples Town Improvement Company. After surveying and platting the land, the group of decision-makers and investors began offering it to affluent northern customers in 1887 at the bargain price of $10 a lot.
   By 1888, the flourishing town of Naples boasted a real estate sales office, general store, post office and hotel. Growth in the sleepy little fishing town grew at a measured pace largely due to an important marketing theme that promoted the idea of owning a second home to affluent homebuyers. The number of seasonal homeowners had increased to 80 by January 1927 when the first passenger train, the Orange Blossom Special, pulled into the Seaboard Air Line’s Railway Depot at 10th Street and 5th Avenue South. The recently renovated depot still stands today as a valuable tourist attraction but more importantly as a monumental testament to what can happen when creative visionaries put their heads together.
   While the railway provided the most comfortable route for tourists coming from the north, another essential piece of the town’s history – U.S. Highway 41 – also offered visitors a gateway to the Gulf of Mexico, its beautiful beaches and bays as well as the
rivers, inlets and estuaries that make up the region’s ecosystem. Though few Neapolitans today pay attention to any other portion of the highway other than the last 275-mile stretch that connects Tampa to Miami, it has its origin in Copper Harbor, Michigan. Known locally as the Tamiami Trail, its 165-mile north-south section extends from Tampa to Naples whereupon it becomes an east-west road whose final destination is Miami’s Southwest Eighth Street, better known as “Calle Ocho” to Little Havana residents.
   Construction of east-west section of the Tamiami Trail in Collier County began at the junction of Naples’ 5th Avenue South in 1923. Now a National Scenic Byway, it was funded by Barron G. Collier whose master plan for developing the region included linking Collier County to Tampa and Miami. The completion of 76-mile east-west link, first named the Miami-Marco Road, finally allowed through traffic on April 25, 1928.
   Few modifications and repetitive heavy usage since the first Firestone tires turned upon its crushed shell base, this significant intersection of U.S. Highway 41 and 5th Avenue South has developed a “tennis elbow.” Locally known as Four Corners, the user-unfriendly barrier is the cause of separation anxiety due to its dividing of the city’s vibrant central entertainment and retail district from its vital Gordon River and Naples Bay waterfront as well as its other major retail, office and residential developments at Bayfront, Trail’s End, BellaSera, Intermezzo and Renaissance Village. “The U.S. 41 and 5th Avenue South corridors began as basic unimaginative strip retail areas that served a small fishing village,” advises David Farmer PE, AICP, Director of Land Development for Keystone Communities and the Urban Land Institute’s Southwest Florida District Chapter’s Chair in charge of the organizing the prestigious annual Winter Institute. “Thanks to Andres Duany and other innovative Naples visionaries, the area went through a renaissance that infused it with vitality by integrating a residential aspect,” continues Farmer.
   Farmer believes that a successful redesign of Four Corners will positively compound the planned development and bring about a critical mass of people that will support the shops, restaurants and professional offices. “The new equation that adds the Goodlette Road South development to the 5th Avenue South expansion, the Third Avenue extension to Renaissance Village and Intermezzo and the vibrant 5th Avenue South downtown district to everything equals more than the sum of its parts. The synergistic equation adds more residents which makes the community self-sustaining,” concludes Farmer.
   To solve the disconnect dilemma, augment the character of the city as it continues to mature and to create an enhanced sense of place, a group of concerned town residents, elected officials, investors and visionary real estate risk-takers once again pooled their creative acumen in order to find a solution that would benefit residents, visitors and business owners. Guided by the principles of new urbanism that call for walkable, distinctive and attractive neighborhoods, city officials conducted a workshop to elicit ideas for the development of the Four Corners area. Aware that the final decisions for dealing with the situation would eventually involve lengthy and detailed consultations with the Florida Department of Transportation, responsible for any changes to Federal highways, the group came up with four potentially good ideas eventually outlined in competition guidelines.
   In need of the best plans for design implementation, one of the group’s visionaries, Matthew Kragh, AIA, a principal of Architectural Network, Inc., suggested a noncommissioned Four Corners Design Competition with a jury award of $10,000 and a “People’s Choice” award of $10,000 which was awarded after a four-day public exhibit at The von Leibig Art Center in March. Kragh’s out-of-the-box idea seems a likely natural response to his and Architectural Network’s involvement in the downtown Naples expanse and development soon to take place on 5th Avenue South and Goodlette Road South. The firm is responsible for the design of Renaissance Village, Naples Bay Resort and Trail’s End.
   Having overseen the eight-panel jury award process
for the design competition which drew more than 70 entries from all over the world – Japan, Germany, Malaysia, Spain, Portugal, Australia, England and the United States – Kragh notes that the winning design for overhauling the intersection may not have all of its
concepts implemented. “This was an ideas-based competition and the city can utilize any of the ideas in
future Four Corners workshops,” says Kragh.
   The winning entry will have traffic-calming effects and identify the area as a downtown activity center, said Kragh who sees its potential to foster safer and greater pedestrian life along the new part of 5th Avenue South. It also lends itself well to establishing connectivity to the ADG project, Renaissance Village, the Naples Bay Resort, the Cottages at Naples Bay Resort,Trail’s End, BellaSera, Bayfront and The Gordon River Greenway as well as to other future developments east of U.S. 41,” adds Kragh.
   Visual quality and public realm enhancements throughout the area combined with the plan’s other qualities elicited a unanimous vote from the jurists who studied a room full of idea boards at the Naples’ City Council Chambers on March 4th.
   Antaramian Development Group (ADG) and the Naples Bay Resort was the title sponsor of the competition. In addition to ADG, other major sponsors were Home & Design Magazine, Premier Properties and The Lutgert Companies along with Phil McCabe and the Inn on Fifth. Says Jack Antaramian, President and CEO of ADG, “Everyone felt that the competition was an ingenious way of getting the world’s most creative minds to evaluate solutions. Naples is blessed with having the economic capabilities to reward the best ideas and to implement them.” The competition was marketed through the American Institute of Architects’ Southwest Florida chapter website, www.aiafasw.org where details can still be reviewed.
   “Winning the competition is a feather in any firm or individual’s cap,” says Mayor Bill Barnett who sees Four Corners as a work on display for the array of Naples’ international visitors. The nothing short of sensational response to the competition surprised Barnett, “I thought we might get a few entries from Southwest Florida architects but I didn’t remotely entertain the worldwide response. It gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling to see that amount of global interest in our community.”
   Barnett is excited about the connectivity and walkability that many of the entries offered, “If we project five to eight years into the future when the Gordon River Greenway is complete, people will be able to park on 5th Avenue South and walk across the new Four Corners to Renaissance Village, the Florida Gulf Coast University’s Naples Center, to the Bayfront art galleries, the Conservancy or Caribbean Gardens. Now that’s an exciting day’s adventure to offer guests of our city,” concludes Barnett.
   Elaine Hamilton, Executive Director of the United Arts Council was thrilled to be part of the competition,
processing registrants and holding the anonymous entries until the jury convened. “We are delighted to be partners in the redevelopment and expanse of the downtown area which we feel is critical to the city’s future,” says Hamilton. “The incredible designs will give the city’s leadership many creative resources to draw from as they finalize their plans. We are involved primarily because we feel that art and good architecture are essential elements of redevelopment.”
   Just like a challenging Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle gets completed one word at a time, the linking spaces in the Naples crossroad puzzle will fall into place with the future implementation of the new Four Corners design. The Naples Bay Resort and Hotel, The Cottages at Naples Bay Resort, the art galleries, world-class shops, restaurants and residences of Bayfront as well as those at Intermezzo and Renaissance Village which includes the 50,000-square-foot FGCU Naples Center with its 350-seat, two-story Chamber Music Hall and magnificent piazza, a potential epicenter for Naples’ cultural events, will soon become part of a day’s itinerary for footloose pedestrians or pedal pushers.
   In the near future, thanks to Naples’ visionaries and the Four Corners Design competition the city will have a planned system of seamless esplanades, pedestrian bridges and boardwalks that will offer up a potpourri of sights, sounds and flavors from its past, present and future. And, undoubtedly, those in the future who wish to look back on the past will find this pivotal change in the expanse of Naples’ Four Corners well documented in the Collier County Museum’s photo library.   

Written by Linda Sechrist