Communities can see future in 3-D

Boulder group’s software offers fly-overs, walk-throughs of proposed town projects

By Jennifer Beauprez, Denver Post Business Writer

New subdivisions and shopping centers that pop up in communities can be far different from what residents expected – surprising even the people who approved the developer’s plans.

That may start to change. A nonprofit group in Boulder called Community Viz is hawking new software that gives people a 3-D glimpse of their proposed future.

The software lets people fly or walk through a 3-D image of what their town might look like. With the click of a mouse, they can change the location or the number of proposed homes or even the color of the houses.

They can see in an instant how the project could affect everything from sewer systems, roads and hospitals to endangered birds and the economy.

A number of Colorado communities – from Dillon and Eagle County to Fort Morgan and Winter Park – are snatching up the software, which sells for $4,900. Community Viz http://www.communityviz.com/ uses the money to cover its operational costs and new software development, said Doug Walker, managing director.

"Smart growth has never been this smart," said Theresa Worsham, development coordinator for Dillon.

"Developers typically have all these fancy-shmancy tools on their side and they try to wow you as planners," said Worsham. "You get this one-dimensional drawing and must imagine what it looks like. And you don’t always realize the impacts."

Dillon is using Community Viz’s software to guide an upcoming decision to buy 175 acres from the Denver Water Board. The town will consider whether home construction is appropriate since part of the area along Lake Dillon is home to an elk habitat and wetlands.

The Community Viz software relies on geographic information systems, or GIS, technology. Similar to global positioning systems, GIS uses very specific reference points much like longitude and latitude to create more accurate maps.

Cities must keep that GIS data up to date for the software to work, said Linda Venturoni, director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, which represents five counties and 25 communities. A small town may not have the cash to hire a trained person to run the program.

"The software has a steep learning curve; it’s cumbersome," Venturoni said. "But it’s got enormous potential."

To save money, Venturoni’s organization hired one trained computer expert in January to handle the 3-D analysis for all of its 30 member governments.

Minturn and Eagle County, in addition to Dillon, are using it for upcoming projects, she said.

That’s exactly what Vermont businessman Lyman Orton wants.

He said he started Community Viz five years ago to help communities plan better. His family invested more than $10 million in the business.

Orton spent several years as a planning-board member in his town of Weston, Vt. But he became frustrated, he said, because it was so hard to do a good job.

"When growth occurred, citizens were surprised at the way it happened. They had one thing in mind, and other things started to happen," Orton said. "I began to think deeply about how we could better paint a picture of the future and the outcome would be different."

Using the profits from his family-owned Vermont Country Store, Orton started Orton Family Foundation, of which Community Viz is a part. The Orton Family Foundation provides similar educational programs, workshops and videos on planning.

Today, just a year after Community Viz introduced the software, hundreds of communities use it – many in ways Orton never imagined, he said.

A professor in Marlborough, Conn., for instance, uses it to help communities design roads and reduce runoff that creates pollution in rivers. And in Missoula, Mont., a nonprofit organization analyzes vegetation, topography and building materials to prevent damage by forest fires.

"We’re not going to make money on it," Orton said. "We just want to try to get it further out into America."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1333456,00.html