Latest news with #Sottile
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Savannah waterfront vision plan details concrete measures for improvement
The emergence of the Plant Riverside District on the Savannah waterfront's west end transformed an industrial relic into a fixture of the city's retail and entertainment profile. Far on the other end beyond East Broad Street, revitalization is running at full speed, fueled Eastern Wharf. That revitalization on the waterfront's anchor ends has only highlighted the need for improvement and reinvestment along the riverfront's core, which has received various plans for improvements dating back to at least 2009. Such is the subject of the Savannah Waterfront Community Improvement District's vision plan for waterfront improvements. Done in collaboration with SWCID board members and Savannah-based design and architectural firm Sottile & Sottile, the vision plan maps nearly 50 potential improvements broken down on the east, central and west waterfront areas. Christian Sottile, the design firm's principal who is also a consultant on other city projects such as Civic Center redevelopment, discussed the plan with the Savannah Morning News. Here is a deep dive into some of its key points: Sottile said one of the themes from the visioning sessions was connectivity, exploring how people navigate the waterfront area by using the riverwalk, River Street, Factor's Walk or even Bay Street. But there are also north-south connections at each of the streets on downtown Savannah's historic grid (Bull Street, Abercorn Street, Whitaker Street). "We really diagnosed each of those connections to see what's working very well and what's not working very well, because that's a big part of making the riverfront accessible to everyone and enjoyed by everyone, that it's safe and accessible for residents of the city, for visitors as well," Sottile said. As a starter, the plan posits that points of access to River Street should be recognizable and easy to find. The same could be true in the inverse, where access points to streets on the grid are identifiable from River Street. Those key connections are one area where the waterfront area could be improved through more identifiable wayfinding. Use of signage can also contribute to the iconography of a place, such as New York City's subway signs. "When we come up and down from the river, maybe there is a Savannah way of creating a signature ... those kinds of ideas of doing wayfinding, not in a temporary way, but in a very thoughtful and durable way," Sottile said. Other options for improved connectivity include linking the riverwalk at sections where it is currently separated. At one section on the east end, the riverwalk is separated by a sliver of water. The plan proposes a bridge joining the paths. At a different point, the riverwalk is broken by a surface parking lot, and the plan outlines potentially reconfiguring that lot to connect the path. When it comes to reimagining how certain spaces are explored for different uses, a few surface parking lots along the waterfront come into focus. Sottile's plan proposes two potential new uses for those lots: multi-use plazas and parks. Gathering space for pedestrians or potential outdoor dining options in current parking lots could reduce auto traffic and create more activated spaces, the plan states. The need for parking lots on the waterfront is less than when those lots were created, given new parking decks exist at each end of the river, Sottile said. "(The plan) calls into question: are some of these spaces underperforming today, and could they perform at a higher level and provide more benefit to the city and to the to the life of River Street?" Another opportunity for transforming a portion of the waterfront is at Factor's Walk. The plan offers two recommendations: make the entrance to Factor's Walk more of a gateway and create an art gallery walk along its walls. The start of Factor's Walk is currently dimly lit, with bare brick walls and scattered graffiti. Sottile noted that River Street is in many ways the most historic part of Savannah's National Historic Landmark District, and the street is lined with historic buildings and multiple-story facades. But when the sun goes down, the faces of those historic structures are invisible. A lack of lighting along the facades leaves the primary lumination on River Street coming from restaurant lighting and open storefronts. The vision plan sees the lack of lighting as an opportunity to increase the waterfront's vibrancy by uplighting its signature facades. "There are certain buildings that just have a really good potential for that. They have good architecture, and they'll benefit from that," Sottile said. Other lighting opportunities include the tunnel under the Hyatt Regency Savannah Waterfront hotel. The plan also proposes fully enclosing trash bin holding areas, many of which are located along ramps connecting Bay Street to River Street. Today, garbage bins are exposed to the public eye and often in those prominent places. The plan envisions those enclosures as having low-sloped roofs and doors to fully close the holding areas. Evan Lasseter is the city of Savannah and Chatham County government reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at ELasseter@ or on X (formerly known as Twitter) @evanalasseter. This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah waterfront vision plan details concrete measures for improvement
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sottile discusses New Age movements, women carving out influence, and the intersection in event promoting second novel
Apr. 3—Leah Sottile is no stranger to conspiracy theories, extremist beliefs and fringe views. It's the arena where she's made her bread and butter as a freelance journalist and the focus of her latest endeavor, "Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets and the Fever Dream of the American New Age." Inland Northwest residents packed the rooftop event center of the Steam Plant on Wednesday when Sottile discussed her second book delving into the world of New Age ideologies, folklore and personalities with reporter Emma Epperly as part of The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages series. "You hear that saying, 'If you go far enough to the right or far enough to the left, the ideas start to meet each other,' " Sottile said. "So as I keep talking about this book, it's like, this is the intersection point. This is where people who may present as really politically different find the shared ideas." The event was a reunion in more ways than one. For Sottile, it was a reunion with the Lilac City, where she began her journalism career at Gonzaga University and then the Inlander. For Epperly, it was a reunion with the newspaper where she covered public safety before joining Idaho Education News last fall. It was also a reunion between the pair, who last spoke in a public forum shortly after the publication of Sottile's first book, "When the Moon Turns to Blood: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and a Story of Murder, Wild Faith, and End Times." The thoroughly reported novel examines the extreme religious beliefs held by the couple and how they fit into the landscape of extremism in the West, and served as a jumping-off point for the topic of discussion Wednesday, Sottile said. After writing her first book, Sottile said she decided she was ready for a break from reporting on extremism and wanted to write about trends that interested her. A Portland resident, Sottile said the markers of the New Age movement's popularity were evidenced in her walks around her hometown, which seems to feature "a crystal shop on every corner." "You can kind of get this vibe that this New Age thing is a really big deal, and so I started looking into it," Sottile said. "I'd heard a bit about this group called 'Love has Won' in Colorado, and before I knew it, I was writing another book about extremism." The new religious group Love Has Won, formerly called the Galactic Federation of Light, serves as a throughline for readers as Sottile explores the ideologies, people and trends that fall under the wide umbrella of the New Age movement. Sottile said it was hard to approach such a "loosey-goosey thing," with her usual approach rooted in concrete facts and figures, but she found herself gravitating toward exploring certain figures and questions, like the late Love Has Won leader Amy Carlson, and "how women find a place of standing for themselves in spirituality." Women tend to be more drawn to the movements than their counterparts, and Sottile said exploring female power tends to be a mainstay of her deep dives. She attributes it to her upbringing in the Catholic church where she admired the female saints, but at an older age realized women were not given much agency or power. "That kind of gave me some characters to concentrate on, and so I started to try to find what their shared ideas were," Sottile said. "You have people who believe in the lost civilization of Lemuria, you have people who use tarot cards and believe in aliens and that they're ascended God-like beings." Carlson was one of the former. She claimed to be a 27,000-year-old refugee from a long-lost land called Lemuria who was later reincarnated as several prominent figures like Joan of Arc and Marilyn Monroe. She's one of a number of New Age leaders Sottile explored dating back hundreds of years, claiming ties to mythological lost places like Atlantis or Lemuria. Sottile does not approach Carlson's story, or the many others contained in the book, as some may, with a chiding snicker or dismissive tone. Instead, she explores where New Age movements and leaders begin to cross the line into causing real harm, like any religious movement. One of Sottile's strengths is approaching topics with care and sincerity instead of the more dismissive reactions other reporters may have, she said. With coverage of the New Age movement, a lot has been surface level, or paints it more as "a joke, and less trying to understand why so many people are interested." "That's what I was trying to do, is try to understand people really believe this, and people really have believed this for a long time," Sottile said. "That's interesting to me. I think that that says something about spirituality. I think it says something about power. It says something about what people are seeking."
