Last Thursday 44 participants from 12 towns in Maine and New Hampshire along with local businesses, regional and state planners, and non-profits attended the Coastal Training Program's Strengthening Town Centers and Transforming Commercial Corridors workshop with Randall Arendt.

Randall began the evening with a slide show of pictures with features associated with well-designed commercial and mixed use development throughout the country. Some of these features include:

• Introduce central medians planted with shade trees to calm traffic and increase real estate value
• Link parking lots with sidewalks for pedestrians
• Use multiple-story mixed-use construction
• Create “greenways” for walkers and cyclists out of drainage areas to improve water quality and provide habitat

Afterwards participants broke out into groups to transform an aerial of an existing commercial corridor using the design techniques Randall had shown and discussed earlier. The groups shared their new designs with each other, one planner commented, “lots of before and after pictures - made the ideas accessible, showed that change can happen!”