Executive Summary HopeWorks Station North is a net zero–ready development at which affordable housing, workforce development, and job training combine with innovative sustainability elements to improve the life of residents and help the planet. Owned by HopeWorks and Housing Hope, the mixed-use retail and multifamily housing development provides comprehensive housing, social services, and job reentry […]
The Site and Neighborhood Entegrity Energy Partners—an energy services, sustainability, and solar development company—developed a net zero commercial office space for company use, along with 28 market-rate apartments in downtown Fayetteville, Arkansas. This structure combines Entegrity’s new office building with 28 market-rate apartments to form a three-story mixed-use development. The decision to include apartments along […]
A bright white “side-scraper” stretches three-tenths of a mile along the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles, sandwiched between railroad yards and the river on one side and the city’s burgeoning loft district on the other. This structure is One Santa Fe, whose 510,000 square feet of space includes 438 apartments (88 of which are affordable units), as well as 78,620 square feet of retail and office space. The development, located on a narrow parking lot leased from a transit authority, was built using $165 million in public and private housing and commercial financing. Surrounding One Santa Fe’s internal pedestrian promenade is an eclectic mix of retailers, including both local convenience businesses and regional specialty shops that complement the neighborhood’s artistic and creative energy.
Kashiwa, a city with a land area of 115 square kilometers (44 sq mi) and a population of just over 400,000, is in Chiba Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo in Japan’s Kanto region. Though home to companies in food processing and other industries, as well as a professional soccer team, it is now best known as the home of Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City. Currently being developed on 273 hectares (675 ac) in northwestern Chiba Prefecture, Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City was launched in 2005 with the opening of Kashiwa-no-ha Campus Station on the Tsukuba Express train line. The land is divided into 299 parcels, to be subdivided further into blocks with interconnecting streets and pathways. Initial development is taking place in parcels 147, 148, 149, 150, and 151. This 42-hectare (104 ac) group of parcels extends outward from Kashiwa-no-ha Campus Station and encompasses the University of Tokyo Kashiwa Campus, Chiba University Kashiwa-no-ha Campus, Kashiwa-no-ha Park, and industrial areas.
Accessible from Tokyo in less than an hour by train, Kashiwa-no-ha is an area rich in natural beauty as well as the home of a concentration of academic and research institutions. Creation of the grand design for the project was from the beginning a collaborative endeavor, with Chiba Prefecture, Kashiwa, the University of Tokyo, and Chiba University involved in the planning and deliberation.
Les Docks Village is a new lifestyle and urban retail center, located in the waterfront district of Marseille, that was developed by Constructa Urban Systems for owner JP Morgan Asset Management. The project involved the rehabilitation of the 15,000 square meters on the ground floor of Les Docks, an 80,000-square-meter office building originally built as a warehouse in 1857. The new design for the lower-level Les Docks Village retail area provides light, transparency, nature, and new color around 60 shops and restaurants arranged around four courtyards connected by an interior passageway that runs through this very long building. The upper floors were restored in an earlier renovation, and this ground-level redevelopment opened the building to the public with a festive and convivial atmosphere.
Encore is a mixed-use, mixed-income redevelopment of what had been public housing just north of downtown Tampa, Florida, developed by a partnership between a housing authority and a bank-owned community development corporation. Encore currently comprises four apartment buildings with a total of 662 units of housing, 559 of which are affordable to seniors and family households with low incomes. At full buildout, the LEED for Neighborhood Development Gold–rated community will have up to 1,513 housing units, plus 180,000 square feet of office space, 200 hotel keys, and a 36,000-square-foot grocery on its 12 city blocks. Over eight years, the $425 million investment will create 5,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs on a site that previously supported only 18 jobs. Encore uses innovative and efficient districtwide approaches for stormwater management and cooling.
After the village of Orland Park, Illinois, invested $35 million in public infrastructure and land assembly, the real estate market collapsed and quashed anticipated development that would bring taxes to reimburse the village investment. When a new partner proposed a mixed-use project but could not obtain sufficient conventional financing, the village took the very risky step of providing a loan that completed the financial package. The village now has a viable center which achieved its initial goals and it has plans to repay the public investment.
UniverCity, located atop British Columbia’s Burnaby Mountain and adjacent to Simon Fraser University (SFU), one of Canada’s premier educational institutions, is a 65-hectare (161-ac) master-planned community expected to house more than 10,000 residents upon completion. A compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented community, UniverCity is founded on principles of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Developed and owned by the SFU Community Trust, UniverCity transfers its revenue to the SFU endowment to fund research and education—creating a profitable model for universities with surplus land.
Located in the heart of downtown Fort Worth, Sundance Square is a 38-block commercial, residential, and entertainment district that is a paragon of successful, long-term downtown master planning and revitalization. Through a lasting partnership that began in the 1980s and continues today, Sundance Square Management and David M. Schwarz Architects, with frequent input and support from local property owners and the city, have created and adhered to an ambitious master plan that has enlivened downtown Fort Worth. Developer Ed Bass, a key visionary behind Sundance Square, noted that “we have always believed, from the time we started with the restoration of the initial two-block area in the early 1980s, to today with 20 redeveloped blocks, that Sundance Square is both a financial investment and an investment in the future of our hometown…. I am proud that our generation is giving the next a healthy, vibrant downtown to enjoy and work with going forward.”
Just as Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, has its new town of Celebration, Disneyland Park (née Euro Disney) has Val d’Europe. Both planned communities—Celebration and Val d’Europe—were established and designed on new urbanist principles, and both have transformed their respective regions. In 2008, eight years after Val d’Europe opened, the new community is 60 percent completed and scheduled to be built out by 2018. It is home to 21,000 residents.