Author: YSNews

•  A variety of pathways on the Antioch College campus to promote walking and biking
•  A diversity of housing models, including cottages, townhouses and co-housing
•  Edible landscaping
•  Places for children to play
•  Incubator space for artists and tech businesses
•  Buildings that promote interactions between people
•  The highest green standards in design and construction
•  Ways to encourage knowledge sharing between generations
•  Affordable homes
•  Hammocks and tree swings

These were only a few of the many ideas, both big and small, that emerged Sunday evening at the Antioch College Village Charrette. Organizers of the Antioch College Village, a proposed project to create about 160 homes on campus, had invited the community to join in this design activity, and the community responded: about 200 people attended the three-hour event on a cold and snowy night. A talk by Oberlin professor David Orr was canceled due to bad weather.

“We live in an interesting time. The dream of what a home looks like is being redefined,” said design consultant Victor Dover of the firm Dover Kohl of Coral Gables, Fla., in opening remarks. The firm has hosted about 200 such design events, according to Dover.

Three other consulting groups also gave brief presentations: the international Integral Group, a “deep green” engineering firm; Biohabitats, a Baltimore interdisciplinary group that includes biologists, ecologists, civil engineers and landscape architects with a mission to “inspire ecological stewardship”; and Sandy Wiggins of Consilience, who is overseeing the Antioch College Village project.

In introduction, Wiggins, the former head of the U.S. Green Building Council, emphasized the importance of environmental sustainability to the project. The Antioch College Village aims to use the Living Community Challenge as its framework, which calls for buildings not just “less bad” than traditional construction, but ones that “actually contribute to the health and vitality of natural systems,”  including net positive energy creation, he said.

The Sunday event featured small groups engaging with each other to identify priorities for the project, as well as locate potential sites for the homes. According to consultant Dover, the activity was “in the spirit of a barn-raising, neighbors getting together to help each other out.” Later, spokespersons for each table reported on their “three big ideas” to the whole group.

On Monday, one participant, Toni Dosik, said she came away very impressed with the event, and with the Antioch College Board of Trustees for “choosing to spend what it must have cost to bring in such a professional team — it was a high caliber of consultants.”

Dosik was also impressed with the inclusiveness and transparency of the process, and disappointed only that the group lacked racial diversity.

Also impressed, Jane Baker said of the consultants running the event, “They figured out how to get the community involved, and to get feedback efficiently. It was very exciting, and something Yellow Springers are obviously enthusiastic about.”

For Amy Magnus, the introductory remarks from the consultants helped to provide a framework for the participants to consider a wealth of ideas without arguing.

“It worked well in our group,” Magnus said. “We were given good guidance.”

Magnus was also impressed that organizers offered a variety of methods to identify preferences, including drawing, writing and an oral report from each table. “They had a good way of capturing people’s input,” she said.

The five-day event continued Monday through Thursday, with a design studio in the South Gym open to the public.

On Tuesday, consultant Wiggins reported that “things are going fabulously” at the event. Along with the enthusiastic participation on Sunday, many villagers have been stopping in to the weekday design studio, along with attending special meetings around the topics of housing, schools and business, among others, Wiggins said. “Participation is outstanding,” he said.

The designers are working “late into the night” to capture ideas and at this point, “there’s clearly a pattern of development emerging,” he said.

Villagers are encouraged to attend the charrette’s final session on Thursday, March 5, at 6 p.m. to  hear from consultants about their work in progress.

Following the charrette, the designers will further refine their designs before doing a financial analysis of the project. Those will be presented to the Antioch College Board of Trustees in spring or early summer, “for their approval, and hopefully, we’ll move forward,” Wiggins said.

Little set in stone

The idea for the Antioch College Village emerged several years ago during a visit to renowned architect and Antioch alum Robert Davis, the creator of the planned community Seaside, Fla., according to Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt in his opening remarks Sunday evening. Davis urged Roosevelt to find ways to incorporate adults into the college community because, according to Davis, “integrating adults into your campus is the next big thing in American higher education.”

The concept resonated with Roosevelt, who initially saw the project as targeted toward “next chapter people,” those in their mid-50s to their 80s who “want to belong, want to be active, want to be part of something that matters,” he said. Many of that demographic came of age in the 60s and 70s, a time of great idealism and, “we’ve been pretty disappointed,” Roosevelt said. “Many would like to spend their later years together, reaffirming those values.”

When Roosevelt has asked “next chapter” alums and others if they find such a concept appealing, the response has been overwhelmingly favorable, he said. And to the organizers’ surprise, a feasibility study indicated that the Antioch College Village attracts not only Baby Boomers, but those of diverse age groups, so that the original market has broadened.

Little of the Antioch College Village is “set in stone” at this point, according to Roosevelt, but one thing is clear. The project has to be income-producing in a way that benefits students at the college, which has a far smaller endowment than most liberal arts colleges.

“We need to think creatively about other sources of revenue,” he said.

So it makes sense to consider the assets of Antioch College, including Glen Helen, WYSO Public Radio and a close relationship with the village, as attributes that might also meet the needs of “next chapter” individuals, along with the financial needs of students, Roosevelt said.

“Our vision is to bring together people interested in finding new and better ways of living together and on the planet,” he said. “And to help support students.”

The News will have a story next week on the March 5 Charrette wrap-up session.

Several hundred villagers took part in last week’s Antioch College Village Charrette, a collaborative design event that aimed to create a plan for a new housing development on campus. Villagers gave input through the week as designers worked late into the night to create a plan, according to consultant Sandy Wiggins. Shown above is a draft version of that plan, in which many kinds of housing are located on the western and northern edges of campus. Above, currently vacant area around North College and Livermore streets, would be filled in with tiny houses, cottage courts, apartment buildings and co-housing. Visit ysnews.com to view the draft presentation of the project.

• Click here to view the entire charrette (197-page PDF document)

It’s like ping-pong if you were on top of the table.

That’s how Al Schlueter described the fast-growing racquet sport with a silly name that is a whacking success at the Antioch College Wellness Center.

It’s called pickleball, and enthusiasts describe it as a cross between tennis, racquetball and ping-pong. Played with a wiffle ball and solid paddle, the game is fast-moving and fun — and it’s a good workout, according to Franklin Halley.

“It’s quick, it takes hand-eye coordination, it’s a reasonable workout, it’s really social, and it gets you smiling,” Halley said of the sport’s benefits.

With six courts striped for play at the new wellness center, pickleball is attracting lots of players. Enthusiasts say that anyone of any age or ability can pick up the game quickly and start to compete. And since it’s usually played as doubles, it’s very social.

The makeup of the dozen or so villagers who came out for the popular Sunday pick-up game included three newbies and a host of regulars eager to teach them. There were young adults and septuagenarians. It included pickleball player of six years and Senior Olympic competitor Deloria Jacobs, who donned her own high-tech paddle and gloves; Halley, a swimmer who started offering pickleball clinics at the center, and Tjioe Kwan, who now plays pickleball three times per week between the wellness center and the Xenia YMCA, where he first picked up the sport. A longtime tennis player, Kwan finds pickleball similar but with its own benefits.

“It’s good exercise, it’s a very social game and it’s easier than tennis because the paddle is shorter,” Kwan explained.

Pickleball is on the rise in the U.S. in part due to its attraction to seniors. The U.S.A. Pickleball Association claims it is the fastest-growing sport in the country with more than 100,000 players and 5,600 courts in the U.S., according to its website.

Wellness Center Director Monica Hasek said recently that they chose to offer pickleball because they had heard from area YMCAs how popular the sport was with seniors, while it attracts players of all ages. In the last month, pickleball has become huge at the center, which surprised her since hardly anyone had heard of the sport when she gave tours of the newly-renovated center.

“In the last month it has gone rampant,” Hasek said. “People are excited.”

Currently there are three times for pickleball pick-up games, where anyone is welcome. The most popular is Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. in the South Gym. The game is also set up Monday and Wednesday from 1 to 3 p.m. in the upstairs gym. Members can come during any open gym time and check out the pickleball equipment from the front desk. There are three additional pickleball courts striped in the East Gym.

While pickleball is easy to pick up, the rules can be a bit perplexing. Games are played to 11, only the serving team can score and an area just in front of the net is off-limits for volleying. A pickleball player who violates the no-volley zone, also known as the “kitchen” or “danger zone,” is a “volley llama.” Another difficult rule is the “double bounce” rule, where both a return serve and the return of the return must first bounce before a player strikes them. Balls that must bounce are called “flapjacks.” Otherwise, it is similar to tennis and ping-pong.

Pickleball can be played indoors or outdoors. In fact, Halley and a small group of other locals have played pickleball on the tennis courts for the past five years, marking out the smaller court in chalk or tape and dropping the net slightly. But the pickleball community is now growing fast.

Among the regulars is Tod Tyslan, who learned pickleball while a student at Antioch College in the mid-90s. It wasn’t too popular then, but Tyslan got his start. He went on to competitive badminton before returning to pickleball recently when the community just “sprouted up,” he said. Tennis player Reggie Stratton recently started playing pickleball for a good workout but also believes it could be helping his tennis game.

“You sweat and sometimes you go to bed sore,” Stratton said. “It’s also going to help with my net reaction in tennis.”

In a particularly competitive game last Sunday, Tyslan and Stratton were down 10–3 to Kwan and Jim Johnson. The plastic wiffle ball on the wooden paddles was delivering a satisfying whack sound, and as the volleys quickened, the waiting players on the sidelines became rapt.

“You guys are getting greedy on points,” Stratton joked when the score was called out.

“You’re not so good at math,” Tyslan added.

Tyslan and Stratton won back-to-back game points to keep themselves alive, then lost three straight, with Tyslan barely missing a volley into the net on game point. Even in defeat, Tyslan had what Halley calls the “pickleball smile,” saying of his fault:

“I got most of it.”

Pickleball was started in the mid-1960s in Bainbridge Island, Wash, according to the U.S.A. Pickleball Association. The game was first improvised using a badminton court, ping-pong paddles and a wiffle ball. Eventually they lowered the net and started playing on a hard surface. The name is shrouded in legend, but according to some accounts, it was named after the inventor’s cocker spaniel, Pickles.

The Antioch Wellness Center, which opened in September 2014 after an $8 million renovation, has 1,753 members, including Antioch students, faculty and staff, according to Hasek.