Focused on the appearance of the city's gateways, a group of UGA graduate students works diligently at City Hall Annex Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Nine University of Georgia graduate students spent last weekend developing a conceptual design for the gateways into Wilkes County with an eye toward identifying those things that detract from the overall appeal and positive image of the county.

Utilizing components of the Georgia Made/Georgia Grown program, students in the College of Environment and Design and their instructor Pratt Cassity incorporated the theme of Celebrating People, Places and Things to showcase the native qualities that contribute to the county's identity and visual character.

Part of an ongoing effort by the City of Washington in partnership with Wilkes County, Cassity said, the UGA involvement will contribute to the active promotion of heritage tourism and community pride. "Conducted through a service learning process called a charrette, the group spent an intensive 72-hour planning weekend during which student designers from the fields of Landscape Architecture and Historic Preservation collaborated on a vision for development of the proposed gateways and corridor improvements."

The charrette process takes place away from campus at the project site, Cassity said, with the team setting up a full working office complete with drafting equipment, supplies, computers, printers, copy machines, and telephones. "They perform fieldwork, comb through planning documents, carry out extensive research and interview stakeholders while striving to arrive at solutions for enhancement of the targeted area of concern."

During the course of the weekend, the students analyzed eight roadways (Ga. 378 to Lincolnton, U.S. 78 east to Thomson, U.S. 78 west to Athens, U.S. 80 to Warrenton, Ga. 47 to Crawfordville, Ga. 44 west to Greensboro, Ga. 44 east to Chennault, and U.S. 17 to Elberton) as they generated concepts for protecting the visual scenic, historic, or agricultural qualities while creating gateways to the county.

Additionally, they will be recommending how to identify important landmarks, as well as suggesting sensitive and appropriate signage to direct travelers through the county. One of the group's main objectives is to identify those things that detract from the overall appeal and positive image of the county.

Brady Richards, a Minnesotan in his third year of UGA's Master of Landscape Architecture program, said, "Washington-Wilkes has so many assets and the negatives are so few, so this was a really fun project. Success is respecting and protecting the great things that are already here."

Cassity said, "Our students get such a wonderful taste of the real world by working on servicelearning projects like these. We use your county as a classroom and are provided a perfect teachable moment. These kinds of projects stay with the students throughout their careers."

The solutions developed from the Washington-Wilkes County Gateways charrette will be presented in a final report targeted for completion by the beginning of 2010. It will serve as the basis for decision making for local planning and policy recommendations.

The charrette process was used in Washington previously to create the vision for redevelopment in the Rusher Street area, Cassity said, "This project will be a companion piece for the fine work that the City is doing at Rusher Street and will augment the recently completed Washington-Wilkes Comprehensive Plan and Washington Multi-Use Trails Plan."