The Man with a Plan

Scott Freres and his Chicago firm (with plenty of Badgers on board) are influencing popular urban landscapes across the country.

In a loft space overlooking popular bars, restaurants, and a doughnut shop where people line up for blocks in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, Scott Freres ’86 glances at a collection of urban development plans that have created similar buzz.

There’s a sketch of the Irish Green lawn at the University of Notre Dame, a new beloved gathering space. There are renderings of a reinvigorated Main Street in downtown Kenosha, Wisconsin. And there are plans from ten former industrial towns in Oregon that are starting to bustle again after years of struggle.

The designs are tacked to his bulletin board to remind Freres of the projects he has been a part of since he co-founded The Lakota Group, an urban planning and landscape architecture firm, twenty-one years ago. One of the thumbtacks has special significance: it’s a Motion W, the iconic athletics logo from his alma mater, a place Freres credits with setting him on his path. Today he’s at the forefront of change as urban planning and landscape architecture have evolved into a blended industry.

“[The university] gave me a fundamental platform that I built my career around,” says Freres, who shows his appreciation by returning to campus for guest lectures and sitting on the content and design committee for Alumni Park, a green space that the Wisconsin Alumni Association is developing next to the Memorial Union.

Freres has made it a priority to hire UW graduates at his firm, where today five of the sixteen full-time employees are alumni, and others have passed through over the years.

“There are other Wisconsin alumni looking out for fellow Badgers. … It’s good to know these kinds of employers exist,” says Sarah White ’04, a senior planner and landscape architect at the firm.

Freres, who grew up in suburban Chicago, knew by the time he turned eighteen that he wanted to bring people together with architectural designs that respect the environment. While touring the UW, the view looking down Bascom Hill to State Street convinced him that Madison — where nature seemed harmoniously paired with development — would be the ideal place to study.

But when he enrolled in the 1980s, landscape architecture was not the trendy, almost assumed aspect of urban planning that it is today. Freres’s courses focused on wholly environmental topics such as natural resources, wildlife, and resource protection, with less attention paid to the urban environment. People commonly confused his career choice with wanting to be a gardener.

“If you called yourself a landscape architect twenty-five years ago, the first question from your mom was, ‘Do you get your name on the side of the truck?’ ” he recalls. “[People think] you’re the guy putting the bushes in when they’re done designing the building.”

In those days, Freres explains, landscape architects were an afterthought in major development projects, brought in to help think through site-specific issues, or to choose plants.

But changes in the way society now thinks — with a new awareness of the environment, a focus on quality-of-life issues, and an interest in learning from examples around the world — have allowed landscape architects to become key members of the design and planning process.

“Today, the landscape architecture world can be much broader,” he says. “It can be much more at the macro level of addressing community-planning issues, addressing policy issues, and community engagement. Twenty years ago, that was not part of our role at all.”

To broaden his experience while still a student, Freres took a full-time job with campus facilities planning, where he helped with a renovation of the Memorial Union Terrace. Upon graduating, he spent several years at major Chicago architectural firms — often as one of the only landscape architects on staff — working on making architectural projects more sustainable.

As green concepts became more en vogue, Freres and colleague John LaMotte ’80 were inspired to start their own company, The Lakota Group. Choosing a Native American term that means “allies” as a nod to its respect for the environment and community building, the firm offers public and private urban planning and design, landscape architecture, and historic preservation. A sampling of the firm’s projects is featured here.

A trailblazer for merging urban design and landscape architecture, Freres says he’s heartened to see dozens of firms across the region enter the arena. He welcomes the competition, and notes that the growth is also inspiring universities to retool their courses to better reflect the shift.

Broadening his industry means good things for generations to come, he says, adding, “Landscape in the world I live in is about designing people spaces.”

Vikki Ortiz Healy ’97 is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune

Oregon’s Main Streets

Carlton, Oregon

The problem: After paper and timber mills and other industries left the area, communities in Oregon struggled to revive their main streets.

The strategy: In 2008, Oregon Main Street brought in The Lakota Group to develop revitalization plans for ten cities. The group spent weeks traveling from Oregon’s western coast to its northeastern edge, working with residents, business owners, and civic leaders to help bring life back to their communities.

The results: A fountain now adorns a downtown park in Carlton, Oregon, as city leaders continue to implement suggestions to make the town into a wine-country destination. (The firm’s rendering, above, showed how a few enhancements could make the park into a popular gathering space.) Another community, Oakridge, is enthusiastically redefining itself as the mountain-bike capital of the state, using former logging trails as bike paths. “Some of those towns certainly were at the very start of their revitalization,” says Sheri Stuart, state coordinator for Oregon Main Street. “[The Lakota Group] was instrumental in being able to provide that technical assistance when this was a very young program.”

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Kenosha, Wisconsin

The problem: The city of Kenosha had successfully brought the former industrial town back to life by redeveloping its waterfront. But as visitors turned their attention to the city’s shore, the adjacent downtown was starting to die.

The strategy: In 2011, The Lakota Group spent months interviewing residents, conducting public meetings, and sharing ideas in the local newspapers before creating a strategic revitalization and implementation master plan for downtown Kenosha.

The results: As part of formally adopting the master plan in 2013, city leaders hired Violet Ricker as Main Street manager for the downtown district. Thirteen new businesses opened on Main Street last year; plans are under way for a streetcar expansion (as shown in the rendering, at right); and new signage directing visitors to downtown was unveiled in the spring. “As people continue to come downtown and see what we’re doing,” Ricker says, “they’ll be able to see a very visible change.”

Notre Dame’s Irish Green/Eddy Street Commons

Notre Dame

The problem: A South Bend, Indiana, neighborhood adjacent to the University of Notre Dame was blighted and unwelcoming, but the campus and communities had existed with little collaboration for decades.

The strategy: The university, city, and three local businesses hired Freres and his team to facilitate difficult conversations among the institution, skeptical neighborhood residents, and others to devise a major redevelopment plan for the area.

The results: The project created Eddy Street Commons — twenty-four acres of new row houses, condominiums, apartments, retail stores, hotels, and restaurants. The city improvements coincided with Notre Dame’s designation of the Irish Green, sixteen acres of adjacent open space (shown in the photo, above). “It’s been an incredible change,” says Gregory Hakanen, director of Northeast Neighborhood Redevelopment for Notre Dame. “[The project has] really blurred the line between campus and community, and it’s really given a sense of common ground.”

St. Cloud, Minnesota

St. Cloud, Minnesota

The problem: For years, leaders of the city of St. Cloud struggled with playing second fiddle to the Twin Cities and searched for a way to gain recognition for the community they love.

The strategy: The Lakota Group, working with the St. Cloud Arts Commission, developed a “placemaking plan” that could help the community articulate its identity and promote itself to the public (including a new signage system, represented above).

The results: Freres and his team created “St. Cloud — Greater” as a branding slogan to advertise the greater St. Cloud area. They then produced a video — a first for The Lakota Group — to drive the brand home, and Freres has been inspired by the new approach. “I like the idea of trying new things and experimenting with new communication tools,” he says.

Oak Park, Illinois

Oak Park, Illinois

The problem: In Oak Park, an artsy community west of Chicago known for its Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, a prominent section of the historic downtown along Marion Street had fallen into disrepair, with vacant storefronts that discouraged pedestrians.

The strategy: Village officials hired The Lakota Group to propose a design that would recapture the city’s historical roots, yet create a look that would last for generations to come. Bold recommendations included returning vehicle access that had been cordoned off for years, restoring brick streets and blue stone sidewalks, and using state-of-the-art water drainage systems that shoot rainwater back into hanging planters.

The results: Three years later, Anan Abu-Taleb, Oak Park’s village president, says a sense of energy has returned to Marion Street (shown in the photo, at left): “It feels like it’s been there forever, and it feels like it’s going to be there forever. … It’s kind of a bridge between the past and the future.”

Published in the Summer 2014 issue