The Drill Hall was crowded last Wednesday night, and it was hot, so hot that when you stepped outside into the 30-degree heat, it felt cool. But no one seemed to mind in the slightest.

Base31’s Neighbourhood Plan Ideas Fair was, not surprisingly, a slick event. At the peak, the vast Hall held close to 300 people. Large, expensive bunches of flowers were everywhere, along with cold water and lemonade. Greeters were dressed in matching colours. There was plentiful fresh food at stations hosted by Cressy Mustard and Arvy’s Street Eats among others — impressive given there is still no running water. Lifesize, colourful graphics invited and explained, seeking collaboration. That was word of the night, the word of the year, maybe, at Base 31. They collaborate. They partner. They want you.

It was a masterful exercise in community-focused PR – or “embedded marketing.” But the Base is not trying to make me buy makeup, or a weight loss program, or tanning beds. What exactly are they selling? Brilliant artworks by local artists such as Portia Chapman’s Building a Bright Future and SaraLou Miller’s Birdwoman were prominently displayed. Local Cree singer and composer eaoh Argos gave a terrific performance. Mayor Steve Ferguson made a speech.

In conversations around the event, various collaborators and partners, such as Andrea Dawes, of the Arts Council, described things they’d been hired to do. Ms. Dawes, for example, guided local artists in making murals, now displayed at the entry to the site. Another program in the works is a Food Entrepreneurship Accelerator – a business bootcamp designed to help organic and farm-to-table farmers produce what the Base needs to draw people in, to sell.

But Tim Jones, the CEO of PEC Community Partners, insists, “It’s not just about tourism, though that is the starting point.” The consortium of developers behind the Base is involved in over 100 ongoing partnerships with community organizations and businesses. This summer’s Experiences Market offers comedy, theatre, music, drone shows, workshops. “We want to transform the county into a 365-days-a-year destination,” said Jones. Dozens and dozens of trades and suppliers are at work transforming the old gunnery school barracks right before our eyes. The enormous project is not without enormous obstacles. The Base is uninhabitable; running water is another full year away, and even then, “capacity will be a problem,” worries Mr. Jones.

The larger vision is of a collaborative, dynamic, and evolving community. In 30 years, PEC Community Partners, which purchased the huge property a scant 18 months ago, sees 5,000 to 10,000 individual units of housing here. To put that in proportion, Port Picton is developing just over 300 units on the harbour, and the proposed Hilden Homes development, Tulip Estates, somewhere between 200-400. Picton’s current population is 4,000.

At the moment, Base31 occupies just 70 of the site’s 750 acres. It will be the focal point, inviting visitors and residents alike to its art galleries, museums, shops, and cafes.

The first neighbourhood slated for development is Harbour Overlook. It will occupy the corner of the property closest to the escarpment, right next to the Heights, with a spectacular view of Picton Bay. That might be as little as five years away.

Dennis Pieprz (Matthew Sandlin/Base31)

“We need more people in PEC,” said Mr. Jones. “To get them here we need housing. Workers need housing, young families need housing, it’s well known. And we are not waiting. We are ramping up right now.” They hope, of course, to take advantage of the billions of dollars in federal funds soon to be made available in a national housing strategy.

Overseeing these efforts is Dennis Pieprz, a Boston-based urban planner with a global reputation for the creation of urban villages, including the Lakeview Village community in Mississauga.

“There is nowhere like this anywhere in the world,” he says, gesturing around the Drill Hall in which we stand, lofty, grand, a gentle light filtering through high, high windows on every side. The barracks and mess halls of the old military base will form the hub of a constellation of linked villages, extending through a series of green, landscaped arteries that shoot out from the existing buildings, and connect like the bones and sinews of an outstretched human hand. The theme is of a living landscape.

Mr. Pieprz’s plans prioritize people. They employ the design principles of a school called New Urbanism. It fits human-scaled, intimate villages into natural landscapes.

Greenspaces Everywhere

“This is the opposite of suburban,” said Mr. Pieprz. “No garages in front. Walkable, with multiple paths and footpaths. Greenspaces everywhere. People, villages, are connected. It’s as simple as front porches.”

 Plans feature mixed-use buildings in every neighbourhood — townhouses, lofts, studios, perhaps co-op development, and rental housing. Side by side. New Urbanism is, as its name suggests, an urban design school; it stresses intensification; it creates density and is scaled for cities and towns full of people.

It began with the work of Jane Jacobs in the 1960s and still defines the best of community design. It invented the idea of the five-minute neighbourhood: nothing essential, such as parks, libraries, schools, and grocery stores, should be more than a few minutes away. Streets, laneways, playgrounds and parks are all treated as crucial public and civic spaces.

 “We want people to see beautiful small-town development, what that looks like, neighbourhoods designed on a human scale, and integrated into the landscape, not destroying it.”

Other notable master-planned communities, such as Seaside in Florida, and King Charles III’s Poundbury in the UK, Mr. Pieprz notes, erased the landscapes they took over. While Mr. Pieprz takes inspiration from the historic village greens and commons of England, he is emphatic that this development is unique to the landscape of PEC. Place informs the design; the specific contours of PEC are embedded in the plans. “We are not destroying any farmland for this project,” he notes.

A Campus for Everyone

The gunnery school was a training base, a campus, in other words, with residences, practice rooms, classrooms, dining hall. Mr. Pieprz has participated on teams re-envisioning the university campus from Paris to the Philippines. Key to his projects is the integration of the university into the surrounding community, not hiving it off.

Participants at the Ideas Fair worried, though, about silos — that Picton’s Main Street will empty out to a place for mundane errands — grocery store and big box shopping, while the real action is at the Base. Mr. Jones notes, though, that the municipality recently expanded its boundaries to include 80% of the land up here, making it eligible for services. The hope is to expand, not diminish. A shuttle — hopefully electric — could connect Picton, Base31, Bloomfield, and Sandbanks.

For now, the world is their oyster. Right before our eyes, these beautiful, if rickety, old buildings are becoming new again — and yet still fulfilling their former functions, as dance halls, lecture theatres, dining and gathering spaces, for teaching and learning. If they connect our present to the past, their promise is still in the future.

Council can expect an official plan amendment application later this year.