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Grant said.
He said of the Denville students,
“These students have a lot of
extremely high levels of critical
thinking. We are introducing
something that I think is overlooked
day to day, and I think now that
they’re thinking about this, (it’s)
changing the way they look at what’s
around them.”
Other volunteers saw benefi ts to
the shorter process. Pennoni’s
Stephen Hoyt, for instance, cited the
impact of giving students real-world
feedback as they went through their
decision-making process.
“We see the gears turn as they’re
going through it,” said Hoyt, an
associate vice president with the
consulting engineering fi rm Pennoni.
Stephanie Turkot, also a member of
the Denville Planning Board, said the
shorter program required students to
come up with a model more quickly.
Her original goal in signing up was
to learn more about the real estate
realm, said Turkot, with Provectus
Environmental, an environmental
remediation fi rm. Now what she gets
out of it is “the feeling of watching
the youth and the ideas that they
have and the way that they think of
things.”
A real-life mayor stopped by as well.
Before the students introduced their
proposals, Denville Mayor Tom
Andes spoke to them about how
planners need to take everything into
consideration — feedback from the
lawyer, the engineer and the public.
“Everything we do in government
is a balance,” Andes said. “I have to
balance everything — the tax dollars
and what the people want us to do
with that.”
The student teams focused on
different elements in their proposals,
such as offering community services
or retaining historic buildings. Several
included a small business incubator.
Ecofriendly infrastructure, net-zero
plans and bike share programs were
common features.
Afterward, “Mayor Grant” and his
council asked the students questions:
How will they accommodate small
businesses? Will the skate park cause
noise and injury issues? Is a park
blocked by housing?
Grant and the council recessed to
analyze the plans, then gave each
team feedback before announcing the
winning proposal.
Superintendent Dr. Anita Champagne,
who was watching the proceedings,
was already a fan of UrbanPlan. She’d
seen the program in East Brunswick
about four years ago and brought
it to East Orange as the assistant
superintendent. When she came to
Morris County, she was determined
to bring UrbanPlan along. It shows
students how “to project-plan to take
a problem and solve that problem,”
she said.
Champagne said education in
the future will focus more on
applying skills to real-life scenarios,
as UrbanPlan does with urban
development and affordable housing.
“The kids see these things happening.
They see development happening
all around them, and it allows them
to understand that they can have an
opinion about it and that they grow
into a place where they can also have
a voice about it.”
The students on the winning team,
Golden Growth Developments Inc.,
appreciated the experience. Aarvi
Patel said, “I feel like at the start, all
of us were really lost on where to go,
but with the help of the mentors, I
think we got a really great learning
opportunity on stuff like how to build
a real community and all the factors
that go into it.”
Levi Salsberg said they went beyond
the outlines of the project in their
thinking. When they placed a store
on a corner, for instance, they
considered the traffi c it would bring.
“I thought this whole thing was a very
creative, innovative project,” Emir
Unal said. RE
Marlaina Cockcroft is a freelance
writer based in New Jersey.