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partnerships, to serve the mixed-use retail, office, and
residential core, along with some park-and-ride
spaces. We located the decks within the blocks adja-
cent to the transit station and the main boulevard
through the site, upgraded from its previous condi-
tion as a semirural road. Other development was
accommodated with surface parking, and if this
TOD was reduced in scale, most parking could be
provided without decks.
As designed, the proposed urban village comprised
three and four-story mixed-use buildings on its
Main Street, the east–west boulevard that bisected
the site, and the buildings tapered down in scale
block by block to two-story residential development
integrated into the existing neighborhoods (see
Plate 26). The plan in Plate 26 proposed new single-
family homes backing up to existing single-family
lots. It’s a good tactic wherever possible to match like
with like when bringing new development up to
existing neighborhoods. (We couldn’t manage this
on the south side due to narrow strips of developable
land. To the east, we transitioned to apartment build-
ings around the end of the linear park that enters the
station area from the sub-area described in the previ-
ous section.)
At the station, we recommended the construction
of a pedestrian bridge over the freight line and an
adjacent street. This bridge connection would open
up the properties on the south side of the tracks for
transit-friendly development. Just as with the State
Fair Station, the bridge would be visually significant
and serve as a gateway to the area. The plan also
encouraged the placement of a conference hotel on a
prominent corner two blocks west of the train station
and adjacent to the existing office park with its large
corporate users (shown in pink in Plate 24). This
would be one of the first buildings seen when driving
into this area from the interstate exit immediately to
the west, and because of its prominence, the building
CHAPTER EIGHT
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THE CITY
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should be designed to create a strong gateway by
framing the street edge and providing a good pedes-
trian environment. Elsewhere we planned smaller
‘boutique’ office buildings with typical floorplates of
6000–8000 square feet (557–743 square meters).
The only exception was a large corporate building
visible from the interstate at the western edge of the
site with its parking tiered down into the fall of the
land (Bottom left in Plate 21).
We continued the existing street from the office
park southwards across our upgraded east–west
boulevard to link directly with the train station so
that office workers in the northern campus could
reach the station easily by a small shuttle bus. On our
plan, this connecting street continued to the east to
link up with the end of the linear park, which in its
turn provided bicycle and pedestrian access between
the station and the adjacent neighborhoods and play-
ing fields described in the previous section.