Megan Recher takes the place of Snyderville Basin Planning Commissioner DJ Hubler, who resigned from the seven-member board on July 23. She will serve the remainder of the three-year term, which expires Feb. 28. Credit: Courtesy of Megan RecherWhen her mother was remodeling the family’s Florida home, Megan Recher asked why she was fixing an old house instead of buying something else. The response was that good buildings need to be restored and maybe Recher should become an architect or a planner.Years later, she did just that. Recher said she fell in love with planning and architecture “and followed that bandwagon forever,” becoming an architect and urban planner. Her work eventually took her to Park City, where she was a founding partner of Place Collaborative, a design firm that practices architecture, planning and policymaking.That background led to her appointment on Wednesday to the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission on a unanimous vote by the Summit County Council.Recher takes the place of Planning Commissioner DJ Hubler, who resigned from the seven-member board on July 23. She will serve the remainder of the three-year term, which expires Feb. 28.The responsibilities of the commission include preparing the Snyderville Basin General Plan; making recommendations to the Summit County Council about amendments to the zoning map and the Snyderville Basin Development Code; and hearing, reviewing and deciding whether to approve applications for conditional uses, long term temporary uses or subdivisions.Recher is a principal in Place Collaborative, which focuses on discovering and sharing place-based design and policy solutions. She works with project teams to provide resilient and regenerative design strategies and projects that are adaptable to regional climate challenges, according to the firm’s website.A friend who knew about her love of planning urged her to apply for the volunteer position, Recher told the County Council members in an interview on Wednesday.“I’m involved with the planning department almost every day for different projects across the country and part of me misses the planning when I’m doing architecture,” she said.Recher earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Miami and a master’s degree in architecture and sustainable design from The University of Texas at Austin and has certificates in historic preservation and public interest design.She did a lot of urban planning projects in Miami, including helping to redo the zoning for the city, and loved the work. She also has worked as a sustainable building advisor in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and was an associate at architecture firms in Dallas and Salt Lake City, among other jobs. Much of her work has focused on sustainable design.When asked what she likes about the Planning Commission as an architect on the other side of the table and whether she sees opportunities for improvements, Recher said she likes that the commissioners seem open to new ideas.She told the council members that she has not been in front of the commission but has always worked with planning departments early on in her projects to discuss how to do them better.“One of the things in Summit County I’d love to see more of is teams engaging the Planning Department earlier on and getting that insight on the project,” she said.The post Architect, planner joins Snyderville Basin Planning Commission appeared first on Park Record.