Last weekend I was working on a charrette crew that included my colleague and partner, Bruce B. Tolar.  Searching through my hard drive today I came across my (improvised) remarks from when the New Urban Guild gave the 2015 Barranco Award to Bruce, the Developer/Builder of Cottage Square in Ocean Springs Mississippi.

"For those of us who knew Michael Barranco and were there for the Katrina charrettes, this is a person who really made a mark on our lives, not just because we showed up and did work together, but because his character was such that it was like playing in a pro-am: You really upped your game when playing around Michael. Very genuine. No artifice. No phoniness. He was genuinely concerned about every person he ever met, and wanted everyone’s life to be better. He decided that architecture was his way to do that.

With his passing, there is a hole in the CNU, but the New Urban Guild offers the Barranco Award to practitioners who are that kind of stand-up guy. It’s about the character with which you comport yourself. It’s about how hungry you are to learn. It’s about how much you care about your community. It’s about how much you love and encourage your fellow-citizens. With that said, I’d like to introduce you to this year’s award-winner, Bruce Tolar, through some of his work. <begin slides of Bruce's projects>

The original Katrina Cottage which by itself was great, but Bruce took it out of the total chaos and mayhem and bad financial circumstances that were pretty much an everyday deal in Ocean Springs at that time, and all along the coast. And from nothing, he created the peaceful excellence of Cottage Square, where he put the pieces together into something amazing which that community cherishes. It has even become a tourist destination. Imagine that: an interim housing solution after a hurricane has become a tourist destination!

So Bruce pulled together all the Katrina Cottages that were built as prototypes for demonstration purposes and brought them to Cottage Square. And he made something out of the pieces, just as we all try to do, which is to aggregate a great place from small incremental parts. It is a modest place, with gravel sidewalks; a place where you can operate a tiny business out of those tiny buildings. And the community that has formed there has become a real anchor to Ocean Springs. From there, Bruce launched an expansion, which was an incredibly ambitious project in a place governed by FEMA… <cough> <laughs and applause> … a terrible environment to work under, but he is doing amazing, excellent work with modest little pieces.

He reached out to nonprofits in the area; he connects with so many people; he’s been in that town forever, serving on many boards; and the idea that there was something to be done after a hurricane, and fixing civilization in general, was a natural thing for Bruce. The people love this neighborhood. The nonprofits he’s been working with have been tremendously empowered by seeing one guy’s ability to put people together and make things work. Bruce is the best design caulking gun you can imagine, pulling everything together on modest means and making things happen. So with that, I’d like to present this year’s Barranco Award to Bruce Tolar."

If you are traveling along the Gulf of Mexico between New Orleans and Mobile you should give yourself a treat and stop to walk around Cottage Square.  It is a special place built in tough circumstances by a remarkable guy.

The following is PG-13 version of a piece of an interview which was cleaned up a bit for this piece by Rob Studeville on Public Square. (thanks Rob).

Incremental Development does sound like you need a lot of capital and that there would be a lot of risk if you don't know what it is. If you didn't know what indoor plumbing is and how it works, that might also sound like a crazy risky idea. But Incremental Development is not that complicated nor that risky. The biggest barrier to entry is the initial step. What is the road map? What is the territory? It's a black box in a lot of people's minds.

Developers are held in very low-esteem.  I see that as more of a feature than a bug because if the bar is low, it's pretty easy to under-promise and over-deliver. On the spectrum of all possible developers that might arrive in your neighborhood from Mahatma Gandhi to Darth Vader,  people expect a developer to resemble Darth Vader.

A small developer just needs to be a noticeably less shitty version of Darth Vader."

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"Find a place that you love that needs you.

(You may love Brooklyn, but Brooklyn doesn't need your ass. Go somewhere that does.)"

-Ryan Terry

Ryan Terry's statement has two parts and you might stop at the evocative  opening; "Find a place you love..." The second half is just as critical "--that needs you". Places that need you will need a lot of work. That is why they need someone like you that is willing to do a lot of frustrating and unappreciated work (because you care about the place and the people in the place. Swell places with high barriers to entry don't need you.

If rents are low, you may need to limit yourself to picking up trash and doing careful serviceable rehabs like the cottage shown above.  Don't forget that the project is the neighborhood not just the building.  That little garage has been rented since Dan Camp renovated it 30 years ago as part of his effort to transform a part of town nobody cared about.  

Be disciplined in what you are willing to spend in total project costs.  If rents are low or high, you still need to limit your project costs to what can be supported with the likely rents.

Do not expect to be welcomed or appreciated. Keep your head down. Under-promise and over-deliver. If you are a developer it will be hard to build trust in a place where people doubt or casually mischaracterize your motivation and methods. Do the work anyway. Any recognition or support you see from your neighbors along the way is a bonus. Take the long view and outlast critics who don't have anything resembling a genius plan of their own. Be smart. Run the numbers on multiple projects before you launch. Start small. Find and support local champions and colleagues. Few resources are as important as Stubborn Hustle in a person hungry to learn their craft.

If you are passing through Bryan, Texas, look up Ryan Terry and have him show you his project on the edge of the downtown.  He is walking the talk.