BRUNSWICK — A meeting to help shape Brunswick’s future took place Monday inside the brick shell of the four-story former Kaplon department store. About 20 business people, elected leaders and nonprofit redevelopers considered options to fill space in the city with a combination of arts venues, small stores and places to live on any income.

Chris Velasco and Elizabeth Bowling, principals with Projects Linking Art, Community & Environment, or PLACE, shared the group’s experience around the country reclaiming environmentally degraded sites, run-down neighborhoods and abandoned buildings. Their nonprofit works with the community, leaders and property owners to imagine and manage redesigned places.

Their leadership can help leverage funding for a site and associated projects, Velasco said.

“This is the secret sauce right here,” Velasco said, referring to stakeholders present in the empty building at 102 W. Potomac St.

Mayor Karin Tome and council members Carroll Jones and Angel White attended the event, which was organized by Terri Householder, the city’s economic development coordinator. Householder and Brunswick Main Street nonprofit leaders Lee Zumbach and Abbie Ricketts greeted property owners, city and county economic development representatives, and County Councilman Jerry Donald.

Afterward, Tome and White said they were ready to learn more about the possibilities of working with PLACE.

“It’s a whole different way of looking at what we’ve got,” Tome said.

Based in Minneapolis, PLACE has developed communities in Ajo, Arizona; Ventura, California; and Reno, Nevada, among others.

The newly designed places are filled with creative professionals living where they work, community performance sites, modest to luxury urban living, and small retail — all based on what they call “profound environmental design.”

In Ventura, the development features ocean-view penthouses for higher-income earners and modest apartments for a formerly homeless population, a theater, a rooftop garden and studios where artists work and live.

Velasco said PLACE is committed to the idea that people need access to nature. Urban forests lie between PLACE’s tall buildings with their smaller footprints. PLACE’s E-Generation innovation involves growing food locally and recycling scraps to fertilize crops and to turn into energy.

The design maximizes vertical space, leaves natural paths and parks accessible, and encourages pedestrian commutes. Residents depend more on mass transit than automobiles in a development “that embraces a trail as our main street,” he said.

With the MARC train station at Brunswick’s heart, Velasco said, the city has one jewel already.

“This is one of the best opportunities for transit-oriented development I’ve ever seen,” Velasco said.

If the city is interested further in working with PLACE, the group would assess five key components for success, Velasco said: location, financing, market, program and leadership.

PLACE conducts many public meetings about its plans, Bowling said.

Jones questioned whether PLACE could solve a parking shortage. Velasco said solutions might include collecting premium fees for street parking and offering a less expensive central location, building a garage that could be converted to another use, and accepting that popular places may survive perceived parking shortages.

People who visit PLACE’s communities remember them not for specifics, but for the overall impression, he said.

“They just think of it as ‘that cool place,’” he said. “People just think of them as great places.”

Brunswick’s inventory of early 20th-century structures impressed Velasco. He said PLACE’s projects have saved much younger properties.

“Here you’ve got some real historic gems,” he said. “There aren’t many of these left. ... I see this as being one of those ... authentic Main Streets.”

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