The American Planning Association, California Chapter, Northern Section (APA NorCal) has honored the San Francisco office’s Urban Design studio with two award wins: VTA’s BART Silicon Valley Phase II Transit Oriented Community Playbooks won an Award of Excellence for Best Practices and the Potrero Power Station Design for Development won an Award of Merit for Urban Design.
The Playbooks present a holistic, phased road map for the Cities of San José and Santa Clara to leverage this once-in-a-century public investment and elevate the station areas to become dense, equitable, and resilient urban centers. View the Playbooks here.
“The TOC Playbooks provide VTA, cities, and communities with the roadmap to build strong partnerships, align resources, and advocate for policies that will lead to a more sustainable, inclusive, and equitable Silicon Valley community,” says Ron Golem, Director of Real Estate & Transit-Oriented Development for VTA. The APA NorCal Jury believed the approach and end result to be innovative and a prime example of ways to connect land use and transportation.
The Potrero Power Station Design for Development document presents a bold urban design vision for a vibrant new district knitting the storied Dogpatch neighborhood with San Francisco’s southeast waterfront. As often described by the client, Associate Capital, the project began with a commitment to reweave the site area’s 29 acres back into the city and create access to a waterfront that had been sealed off from public use since the time of Ulysses S. Grant. With a people-first sensibility, the plan infuses vibrancy into an area once occupied by industry and power generation. Introducing significant housing density, essential community services, and publicly accessible open space all within a transit-oriented, adaptively reused, industrial shoreline site, this is placemaking at its very best. View the Design for Development document here.
“This project sets an incredibly high bar… [it] amazes and humbles me as a project in context,” said Commissioner Vice President Kathrin Moore, speaking at the January 30, 2020 San Francisco Planning Commission meeting at which the Potrero Power Station plan was approved unanimously. The APA NorCal Jury believed that the Potrero Power Station design was great, and they appreciated the recognition of the site’s challenges and opportunities in the design itself.
Congratulations to the project teams on this honor!
