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The trend over the past two decades to build strip malls and big box retailers on the edge of the city has seen the movement of many services, centers of trade and employment out to the urban fringe or edge of the city. Saginaw has not been exempt from this development trend; the Bay/Tittabawassee area sufficiently exemplifies impersonal suburban commercial sprawl. People are not walking in downtown Saginaw on weekends, but are driving to Fashion Square Mall and the surrounding business/services. In essence, the mall area has become the town center. In a speech given last fall by Ed McMahon to the Saginaw Home Builders Association, he commented on this trend as resulting in community loss of the sense of place. He continued by stating that you could be air dropped today at the edge of any American city and you would not know where you were; Michigan or Maryland? McMahon is describing the Bay/Tittabawassee area. This loss of the sense of place is only one of the many issues that will be addressed over the course of the charrette.

Introduction to the Project : RETROfitting Anytown, U.S.A.

Saginaw Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (SMATS) was awarded a planning grant to conduct a five (5) day public design charrette. The purpose of the charrette is to look at retrofitting two intersecting suburban corridors, to make the area both pedestrian and transit friendly. The charrette will focus on issues of pedestrian mobility and accessibility, and public transit. The "visioning" and recommendations resultant from the charrette shall provide planning direction to local planning agencies and private enterprises to retrofit the existing auto-dominated environment.

Nationally renowned firms, Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart, based in Orlando, Florida, and Gibbs Planning, based in Birmingham, Michigan have been awarded the contract to conduct the 5 day charrette.

The project location includes the area along the Bay Road corridor, from McCarty Road in Saginaw Township to Kochville Road in Kochville Township, and Tittabawassee Road from I-675 to Mackinaw road (an approximate 1 square mile radius of Bay/Tittabawassee Road intersection ). Tittabawassee Road is the boundary between Saginaw and Kochville Townships.