Author: Mike Bailey
You could say that landscape architect Theodore Hoerr of Manhattan comes to his newest assignment here in central Illinois with the rich soil of the Midwest under his fingernails and the plants that grow in it a part of his DNA.
That’s because Hoerr, 45, grew up right here – in Dunlap, in fact, on the very site of his family’s Green View Nursery property. Family and COVID-19 brought him back home for much of the last three months. Fortuituously, it also brought him together with Kim Blickenstaff, the central Illinois-born, California’s based entrepreneur and philanthropist whose purchases of multiple iconic properties and expressed vision for them have made many a headline over the last 18 months.
Recently, Blickenstaff commissioned Hoerr’s Terrain Work, a Manhattan-based landscape architecture, urban design and public art firm of which he is founding principal (https://www.terrainwork.com/), to help him mold a reimagined Al Fresco Park, among other potential projects in the Peoria Heights that Blickenstaff has all but adopted.
That eight acres on the Heights waterfront has had a rich and varied history, from its days as part of a pristine river valley that proved a fertile hunting and fishing ground for the Native Americans and French explorers who first settled Peoria to an amusement park that beckoned visitors from all over the state for much of the first half of the 20th century.
Learning to love ‘urban reinvention’
For decades now, it has been a vacant, largely unkempt, flood-prone lot that drivers speed by without so much as a second thought. Now it’s Terrain Work’s job to help restore it to the prominence it once held, if in an entirely new way.
A graduate of the University of Illinois and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Hoerr has come full circle, in many ways. His career has taken him from coast to coast and beyond – to Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South America, Australia – working on projects that “synthesize culture, nature and the built environment.” He started in Seattle studying and working under the legendary post-war landscape architect Richard Haag, whose landmark Gas Works Park there continues to draw raves and visitors in abundance. The idea of converting a blighted urban landscape into something green, new but old at the same time – as Haag did in keeping portions of a rusted refinery as “something of a cultural artifact” and blending that into the natural landscape – is the kind of challenge that most intrigues him. Haag helped him “unlearn some things, some bad habits you pick up,” while teaching him that even decaying industrial structures had a certain aesthetic, “a visual appeal all their own.”
The experience convinced him that urban reinvention was where he wanted to devote his time and talents. Ultimately, Hoerr landed on the East Coast, becoming a principal at Balmori Associates in New York, from which he led design efforts there and in Bogota, Colombia, Sau Paulo, Brazil and the University of Iowa Art Campus.
But it all began for Hoerr back in central Illinois, where his father Thomas Hoerr and grandfather Peter Hoerr founded Green View Nursery in 1958. (His brothers, Thomas II and Michael Hoerr, run it today.) He grew up working in the business: first at the age of 8 cleaning the employee lunchroom, from which he graduated to the tree and irrigation fields, then to work as a landscaper in high school, then finally to the design office during his undergraduate studies.
In 2016, he went out on his own with Terrain Work, which represents the client “from conceptualization to plan creation through construction oversight.” It has since become an award-winning company with a body of work that ranges from large-scale urban strategies to reshape the future of cities to small-scale landscapes that emphasize the craft of building. In addition to his practice, Hoerr has taught landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design since 2015.
“Growing up in a family business definitely equips you with some entrepreneurial skills,” said Hoerr.
The endless horizon of central Illinois is very different from the 500-square-foot apartment Hoerr and his wife inhabit on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. New York is an exciting place, but he’s found central Illinois reinvigorating in its own way, too.
Hoerr talks of “that fine line between preserving the past and preserving the history of things, while also understanding how much inherent cultural value something has … I’m really about preserving things that culturally enhance the city.”
One example of that is Terrain Work’s master plan for the Manhattanville Factory District in Harlem, which stitches together a series of historically significant landscapes. The Malt House was the site of a major brewery in the mid-1800s, and Taystee Bakery was part of a bread-making empire not long after the turn of the 20th century.
Peoria Heights isn’t Manhattan, of course, but in its own way, it presents a similar dynamic.
“What makes Peoria Heights special is that, at least along Prospect, there are not a lot of chain stores, which gives it a unique flavor,” said Hoerr, who expresses a certain disdain for the United States of Generica practices that could put you on a commercial strip nearly any place in the country without a clue as to where you actually are, so identical is the look and feel. He calls it bad planning and bad urban design.
“The reason why Peoria Heights is successful is because this is what people actually want,” said Hoerr. “People like their space and that’s OK, but if you want cultural enrichment and vitality, you want a place like this … with walkability, greater density, and a bespoke urban experience.” But the first priority is Al Fresco. More than just a park, a national prototype Hoerr was visiting the Peoria Riverfront Museum, where he’s also been engaging in design, when CEO John Morris brought up Blickenstaff and what he was trying to achieve.
“John mentioned that Kim was in town,” an email was sent, and “one thing led to another.”
“We were going to tour Sankoty (Lakes Resort and Retreat), and between his house and Sankoty he said, ‘Let’s stop and look at Al Fresco,’” recalled Hoerr. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is an amazing site.’”
Indeed, if Sankoty is “ambitious,” Al Fresco is a potentially “transformational” project for the region, believes Hoerr.
“Now you can make a park that is ecological in nature but also has a civic component to it,” said Hoerr, who points to the Dutch as a world role model in terms of water management, especially in the era of global warming. He wants to try to “get people to understand landscapes as not purely aesthetic” and to create an appreciation for how they “can serve critical ecosystem services such as cleaning water, mitigating flooding and providing new habitat for flora and fauna.”
Of course, the challenges at Al Fresco are significant. It’s a narrow piece of property, it floods, a working railroad track borders it.
“But that’s what makes it interesting,” said Hoerr, who now begins his due diligence – researching the property’s history, both natural and cultural; studying the plants that originally existed there and how new ones might absorb urban water runoff and pollution, how the river looked from that spot once upon a time, how land use affected the property over the years, how it can flood and still be accessible and usable, “how the park fits in the bigger ensemble of public spaces” in central Illinois.
Meanwhile, there’s an economic component to creating green space, too, even though it’s often “a heavy lift” to get communities to understand that it “will save municipalities money more than cost them money … It’s not an either-or proposition. It’s a both-and. It’s what makes it a place people want to be.” In so many ways, Al Fresco is more than just a park, he said.
“In light of the pandemic, public space and landscapes have become more important not just for beautification but for public health and mental health,” said Hoerr.
“What I’ve been advocating to Kim about Al Fresco is that we can design an amazing park, but our ambition for Al Fresco is to have a much broader reach, to develop a prototype to alleviate flooding and build a riparian riverfront habitat … It has the potential to become a national model we can point to for development along a river.”
Al Fresco & more – ‘something whimsical’ -- in the Heights Ultimately, KDB Group may have even more in store for Hoerr’s Terrain Work. One of the things they’re batting around is the concept of temporary landscape/art installations in the Heights in lots that are underdeveloped or waiting to be developed, not unlike Hoerr’s award winning “BroadwayBouquet” project in New York.
Potential sites include the Grayboy Lofts property, a parking area on the south side of the Pabst Building, and both sides of the Kellar Branch Trail crossing along Prospect.
“We would love to get some ideas kicked out and even fabricate some things by next spring,” said Hoerr. “It would hopefully draw upon the history or reinforce the identity of Peoria Heights … something whimsical and engaging that gives people another reason to come experience the Heights.”
The designs might be thematically connected, or not. “Neither approach is right or wrong.”
In any case, now is a creative, exciting time to be in a central Illinois that has otherwise had its economic ups and downs. “I’ve always wanted to work in Peoria and help shape the community and environment where I grew up,” said Hoerr. Now he’s getting that chance.
“And we’re excited to have him on board,” said Blickenstaff.