Articles

• Adapting to shifting sands
• 5 Questions on Engagement
• MASGC shares in Gulf Guardian Award
• Program to certify nature-tour operators
• Bruening recognized for outstanding service
• Symposium to feature adaptive management
• Water-access committee nears end of mission
• Volunteers grow 45,000 oysters for restoration
• Potential end-users test tool for sea-level rise planning
• Fink joins Office of Coast Survey in Mobile
• Featured Publication
• From the Director

Sea Briefs is a report on the results of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.

Editor: Melissa Schneider

Frontpage graphics: Matthew Capps

This newsletter is available in PDF format from:
masgc.org/seabriefs

MASGC supports applied, interdisciplinary marine science research, education and outreach efforts to foster the sustainable development and management of the Mississippi and Alabama coasts and nearshore ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico

Mississippi-Alabama
Sea Grant Consortium
703 East Beach Drive
Ocean Springs, MS 39564
Phone: 228-818-8838
E-mail: seabriefs@masgc.org
MASGP 09-011-04

Adapting to shifting sands
Design plan opens eyes to island's resilient possibilities

The natural history of a town or city can be one of the most important things to understand when planning the town’s future. Graduate students creating an implementation plan for the future of Alabama’s Dauphin Island paid special attention to the different landforms, habitats and wildlife on the barrier island when illustrating how the community could become most resilient in the face of sea-level rise, hurricanes and other hazards.

Auburn University graduate student Matthew Capps, along with Andrew Cole-Tyson, Joao Xavier and others, helped develop a plan to show Dauphin Island residents what their town could look like if it became what residents said they wanted it to be. Capps and other students were part of Auburn University’s School of Architecture’s Gulf Coast Design Lab, which was partially funded by the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.

After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August of 2005, Five E’s Unlimited, a consulting firm, worked with the Dauphin Island residents through surveys and town meetings and led discussions about what residents would like to see in their community. Students from the design lab assisted the firm and residents as they created a strategic plan for the island.

A design lab is an academic setting where students apply the knowledge they gained in their architecture classes to a project that is critiqued by faculty members, community sponsors and clients.

Capps, a landscape architect, then was among a group that focused the most important elements to the community and showed the community the opportunities that could lie ahead.

Capps used aerial imagery, geomorphology (the study of the Earth’s structure), maps and other resources to understand the island’s natural processes and incorporate techniques to make the island more resilient to natural hazards.

“By studying the geomorphology of Dauphin Island, I was able to understand history and dynamics of all the types landforms located on the island,” Capps said. “By doing so, I am also able to predict future shifting landscape or the most stable grounds. The movement of Dauphin Island was the linchpin for the design. The west end of the island is in constant shifts and movements. The east end is more sustainable.”

The community’s main priorities were developing a central business district, a hotel conference center and a main working waterfront area. Capps focused on the central business district while other students studied the feasibility of a hotel and conference center that would allow people to hold conventions on the island and provide enough rooms for them to stay.
The central business district would help support retail, allow more shops to open and provide the island with additional revenue. According to Professor Michael Robinson, who led the design lab with Auburn University Assistant Professor David Pearson, few visitors to Dauphin Island’s rental homes and condominiums spend a lot of money on the island.

“Everyone who comes to Dauphin Island already has their beer chest and groceries loaded in their SUV,” Robinson said. “Then, they leave the island to get more. The idea is to capture some of the money that comes on the island and keep it there.”

The design calls for a new town center to be located where residents drive onto the central part of the island, which is more protected than the west end. The whole center would be built on a 12-foot platform, which would allow for parking underneath and protection from storm surge. It would require tighter urban-development guidelines.

The community stressed the need for a hotel and conference center. The design lab also created a feasibility study and design for a hotel located on the working waterfront just minutes (by foot) away from the business district, where guests could go to buy their daily goods.

“The project was theoretical,” Capps said. “The framework could be set up so it could potentially happen.”

Other elements of the plan included moving all residences to the central part of the island to protect them, creating affordable workforce housing for employees who would work at the hotel, conference center and shops and creating a marina with one pier instead of the area that now exists with about 10 individual piers.

Pat Edwards, who has served on the Dauphin Island Planning Commission for about 20 years, took an active role in the planning process. The Auburn University group offered some out-of-the-box ideas, she said.

“The Auburn group certainly opened a lot of people’s eyes,” Edwards said. “They were great to work with. They are up with current ideas and are encouraged to be creative.”

She said the committee suffered some growing pains as they worked. For example, after they planned overlay districts that would allow uses other than those required in the original zoning, the town realized it would have to go back and change its comprehensive plan to allow the working waterfront design. So, for now, the plan has been shelved.

Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said the community is appreciative that it had the opportunity to work with professionals and begin to look toward its future.

“For a small community, it is a big help for us,” Collier said. “It has been very positive to tough out ideas and then
see them on paper.”