Three new buildings, with 7,553 square feet of retail space on 0.41 acres, bracket a small plaza that replaced a vacant lot at the edge of an established retail area north of downtown Oklahoma City. The three restaurants and eight studio/office spaces complement the area’s established arts anchors.
A leftover infill site in central Phoenix is now home to 25 low-rise condominiums, with a modern design that maximizes the site and minimizes ongoing costs. artHAUS was an architect’s first foray into residential development; as he says, “the design part’s easy for me, but the financing part—that was a big-time learning curve” helped along by a ULI Arizona event.
This adaptive use transformed a two-story, 48,000-square-foot commercial building and ornate movie theater lobby into 23 loft apartments, four neighborhood-serving retailers, and a large banquet facility that fills the former lobby. The structure is the most prominent building along the Seneca Street corridor in south Buffalo, New York. The renovation was completed by a local developer and financed by a local bank, together with historic tax credits, local tax incentives, and grants.
The Newton is an 18,599-square-foot (1,727 sq m) mixed-use retail, dining, office, and events building in Uptown Phoenix, Arizona, housing an independent bookstore with a beer, wine, and coffee bar; a home and garden store; a chef-led restaurant; a small office; and spaces for meetings and events. The Newton hosts hundreds of events each year, whether sponsored by its tenants or booked by the public. It was built within a renovated restaurant/banquet facility whose mid-century modern architecture and old-fashioned cuisine made it a local landmark for 40 years.
AF Bornot Dye Works is a loft apartment and retail project that involved the adaptive use and restoration of three timber and concrete factory buildings north of Center City Philadelphia. The three four-story buildings include 17 rental residences on the upper levels and 13,210 square feet of retail space across two lower levels. The developer, MMPartners, built upon 15 years of experience renovating and building scores of residential and retail properties in the nearby Brewerytown neighborhood. The $10.7 million development was funded with a conventional loan, federal and state historic tax credits, a city incentive loan, partner equity, and a $375,000 mezzanine loan from an online crowdfunding platform.
Jolene’s First Cousin is a two-story, 6,600 square foot retail and residential building in Portland, Oregon with three small retail spaces, two one-bedroom apartments, and 13 bedrooms leased to a transitional housing service provider. Its equity investors, both accredited and unaccredited, accepted a lower current return in order to contribute to the building’s social mission.
Developed by Bouygues Immobilier and recognized as one of the largest sustainable developments in the Paris region, the building occupies a 1.5-hectare (3.7-acre) landscaped site and has been awarded the High Environmental Quality (HEQ) label—the newest official certification from the Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment, a French body focused on improving construction through science and technology. The project was 95 percent leased before completion; 39,500 square meters (425,174 sq. ft.) of the office space is occupied by the European and French headquarters of Microsoft, and 5,500 square meters (59,202 sq. ft.) by Lundbeck pharmaceutical laboratories.
Built on the site previously occupied by the Rand Corporation’s headquarters and more recently a surface parking lot, Tongva Park and Ken Genser Square—once collectively known as the Civic Center Parks—encompass 7.4 acres (3 ha) in the heart of Santa Monica. The completion of these parks in 2014 represents the first step toward completing a plan for the 67-acre (27 ha) civic center area, which re-envisioned the area as a vibrant neighborhood with improved linkages to the Santa Monica Pier, Palisades Park, downtown Santa Monica, and Santa Monica State Beach.
The Perspective Charter School’s new building, which was completed in August 2004, reflects its founders’ principles for an ideal school environment. Perspectives was one of the first public charter schools in Chicago; the success of its first campus, which is in South Chicago, spawned the formation of this campus in the South Loop, a neighborhood that is characterized by light-industrial shed buildings and renovated loft residences. The new school building occupies the acute end of a 1.25-acre (0.51 ha) triangular site that had been a parking lot. The 30,000-square-foot (2,787 m2) facility serves 350 students in grades six through 12—86 percent of whom come from economically disadvantaged households. Classrooms are oriented around a two-story multipurpose room that is decorated with multilingual graphics taken from the school’s mission statement. This room serves as the structure’s “living room” and is used as a cafeteria, main assembly hall, and central social space.
After centuries of use as a military base, a 13-hectare (32 acre) land parcel in the historic center of Breda has been reborn as a public domain. Based on a plan created by architect Rem Koolhas (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), Chassé Park, a multiuse urban infill community has sprouted up where barracks once housed soldiers. It comprises 700 housing units, including 100 units of public housing; 30,000 square meters (322,917 sf) of office space; 2,000 square meters (21,528 sf) of retail space; 1,500 underground parking spaces; and eight hectares (20 ac) of public parkland.