Astoria creates model of its downtown
By JUSTIN CARINCI
Daily Journal of Commerce
Monday, August 31, 2009 10:51 AM PDT
ASTORIA (AP) — While Boston and Los Angeles have poured ample money and employee time into a pilot program to help cities handle growth, Astoria took up the same program by arming interns with 25-foot tape measures.
The program, called the Human Development Overlay District, creates three-dimensional models of entire neighborhoods: Hollywood, Boston’s Chinatown, and downtown Astoria. Planners and social service agencies can then use the models to help the areas accommodate growth. Right now, Astoria doesn’t have funding for a community resource center, or employees to run it — hallmarks of the program in Boston and Los Angeles. The town of 10,000 people couldn’t keep up with those metropolises, said Lucien Swerdloff, a leader in the Astoria program and a computer-aided drafting instructor at Clatsop Community College.
“They have huge resources,” Swerdloff said. “We have no resources here.”
As a result, Astoria’s participation in the program, along with the grant the city received, was reduced. Full participants received $125,000 for the first year, with more to come; Astoria got a one-time grant of $40,000, which pays for interns to build Astoria’s virtual city. Intern Joseph McCartin, a Clatsop Community College graduate, spends his free time exploring three-dimensional models: video games such as Counter-Strike and Crysis. The games got him into the college’s drafting program. “I wanted to see how (the models) were made,” McCartin said.
And Swerdloff got McCartin working on the downtown Astoria project. “I thought, ‘Wow! I get paid to do 3-D modeling,’” McCartin said. To create a virtual Astoria, McCartin and another intern measure buildings in the real Astoria to the inch. A third intern gathers information on how the buildings are used and then enters that into the model.
