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.
The Shops at Waterloo Town Square is a redevelopment of a two city block, 25,548-square-meter (275,000-sq. ft.) enclosed shopping mall into a mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly district. The project reestablishes a strong street presence in Waterloo’s uptown district, with two new mixed-use buildings comprising 17,744 square meters (191,000 sq. ft.) of shops and restaurants and 9,290 square meters (100,000 sq. ft.) of office space. A new retail street bisects the 2.9-hectare (7.2-acre) site, breaking apart the superblock and bringing a human scale to the project.
Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood was a primarily industrial area in the late 1990s when Vulcan Inc., a real estate development company owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, envisioned working with the city and the community to redevelop the nearly 60 acres (24 ha) it owned there into a vibrant, sustainable, and pedestrian-oriented urban center. The opening of Vulcan’s flagship 2200 project in November 2006 represents another milestone in South Lake Union’s rapid transformation into a diverse and thriving urban community.
Occupying an entire city block—nearly 2.5 acres (1.0 ha)—at the gateway to South Lake Union, a neighborhood that lies on Lake Union just north of Seattle’s central business district, 2200 represents one of the largest mixed-use developments in downtown Seattle. The $226 million, 455,500-square-foot (42,317 m2) project features 261 condominiums, a 160-room Pan Pacific luxury hotel, a Whole Foods Market, a variety of shops and restaurants, and distinctive works of art. The South Lake Union line of the Seattle Streetcar, which is expected to begin operations in late 2007, will stop directly in front of 2200.
The Fitzgerald is a 4.5-acre (1.8-ha), transit-oriented, multifamily rental development, built on a brownfield infill site in midtown Baltimore. It includes 275 rental apartments, 24,000 square feet (2,230 m²) of retail space, 77,095 square feet (7,162 m²) of open space, and a much-needed 1,250-space parking garage that serves residents, retailers, the University of Baltimore, and the surrounding community. It is the largest residential property in the city to secure LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification; it includes a vegetated green roof, electric car charging stations, and numerous in-unit green features.
Brays Crossing shatters the stereotype of low-income, single-room-occupancy (SRO) housing, proving that it can be both visually attractive and affordable and built debt-free and without government subsidy. Developed by New Hope Housing, a Houston-based nonprofit, the community features 149 SRO units along with community space and on-site social services, in seven brightly colored buildings that were formerly a dilapidated and blighted motel. The project is clad with a colorful steel mural that attenuates sound from the nearby highway, a functional solution that extends the rich mural tradition of Houston’s East End neighborhood.
Brays Crossing is the fifth project in Houston developed by New Hope Housing, an independent nonprofit founded in 1993 that is dedicated to providing stabilized housing for single adults living on limited incomes. New Hope Housing developed Houston’s first SRO, the Hamilton Street Residences, in 1995 and has provided more than 4,000 individuals — many of whom ultimately transition to traditional housing — with high-quality, supportive housing, helping alleviate homelessness in Houston.
The Manitoba Hydro Place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is cutting-edge office development with a strong focus on sustainability. In an effort to revitalize its urban core, the city of Winnipeg partnered with Manitoba Hydro to bring new high-density, high-quality office space into the downtown area. Covering 0.85 (2.1 ac) hectares of land, the development is primarily composed of 64,590 square meters (695,241 sq ft) of office space and includes a 6,195 square-meter (66,682 sq ft) park and galleria, providing open and sheltered public space.
The nighttime and weekend entertainment concentrated at Fourth Street Live! has reenergized Louisville’s downtown and helped jump-start a residential and tourism resurgence. The project turned a city-owned liability into a tax- and job-generating asset. How it came to be developed is an instructive story that involves the convergence of political will, developer savvy, and stakeholder cooperation around a civic need.
Riding the wave of urban regeneration in the late 1990s, downtown Louisville was making progress, but it was missing one critical element—an entertainment district. Downtown had scattered entertainment venues, a solid supply of hotel rooms, restaurants, a popular convention center, and even an aboutto-be waterfront park along its Ohio River frontage. And it had a not-so-old enclosed mall, the Louisville Galleria, that looked vacant—even if it was eking out a survival—and stood as a physical and psychological symbol of downtown’s hard times.
Vancouver Convention Centre West eschews the traditional model of convention center design, opting instead to blend into both the built and the natural environments in downtown Vancouver. Simultaneously a building, an urban destination, a park, and an ecosystem, the 111,500-square-meter (1.2 million-sf) convention center sits low on the waterfront, preserving existing vistas from downtown. Occupying a former brownfield site, the C$883 million Vancouver Convention Centre West features 92,900 square meters (1 million sf) of convention space, 8,400 square meters (90,000 sf) of retail space, and 37,200 meters (400,000 sf) of walkways, bikeways, public open space, and plazas. The LEED-Platinum public building is capped by a 2.4-hectare (6-ac) living roof—one of the largest in Canada.
One of the most ambitious and transformational city center regeneration projects in the United Kingdom and one of the largest of its kind in Europe, Liverpool ONE is a £1 billion (USD $1.7 billion), 17-hectare (42-ac), mixed-use development in Liverpool, which for years had suffered from disinvestment and decline. Located on the site of the original “pool”—the historic shipping and trading area of the city—of Liverpool, the Liverpool ONE development now boasts six distinct districts, each with a different character and design. Liverpool ONE comprises 165 retail units with over 50 percent of brands new to Liverpool across 152,500 square meters (1.6 million sf) of retail and leisure space, 3,250 square meters (34,983 sf) of offices, more than 500 residential units, two hotels, a 14-screen cinema, a two-ha (five-ac) park, a new public transportation interchange, and 3,000 parking spaces.
From 1929 through 1995, Stapleton International Airport served as Denver’s municipal airport. By 1987, plans were underway to build a new, state-of-the-art airport farther east, and they met voter approval in 1989. Meanwhile, a nonprofit group of civic and business leaders, working in partnership with the city of Denver, formed the Stapleton Development Foundation to determine the disposition of the soon-tobe-redundant Stapleton airport. In 1999, based on the foundation’s guidelines for development, the city selected Forest City Enterprises to be the master developer of the publicly owned site—located just five miles from downtown—which offered the largest urban redevelopment opportunity in Denver’s history. Today, the former airport is being reborn as a 4,700-acre (1,902 ha) master-planned community that, at buildout, will contain more than 12,000 homes, 13 million square feet (1.2 million m2) of commercial development, and more than 1,100 acres (445 ha) of parks and open space. Construction began in 2001, and the first phase, Stapleton District 1, was substantially complete in 2005. Encompassing 489 acres (198 ha), District 1 contains 2,100 residences—ranging from rental apartments to single-family homes, in many styles and price ranges—plus 200,000 square feet (18,580 m2) of office and industrial space, 120,000 square feet (11,148 m2) of retail space, more than 100 acres (40 ha) of parks and open space, and four schools. Reversing the traditional “retail follows rooftops” approach, Forest City built two retail centers in the project’s first year. Although the community is only 25 percent complete, District 1 already offers a mature, walkable, mixed-use community that is home to 4,500 residents.
