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The Othello Town Center planning effort was initiated by Seattle's Strategic Planning Office (SPO) and cosponsored by the local neighborhood plan stewardship group and the merchants association. CD+A was the prime consultant for the project with Solomon E.T.C. providing assistance. The primary goal of this effort was to establish a design framework for a mixed-use town center around the future Othello LINK light rail station in this Southeast Seattle neighborhood.
After conducting a series of interviews with key property owners and identifying the spatial relationships of different planned and existing land uses in the area, the consultants created two design framework alternatives that were reflective of the plans of property owners, ideas of the community about town center amenities, and different scales of public investments in the area.
After receiving public input during a workshop and later at a Community Open House, the alternatives were combined into a preferred design framework plan. This plan takes a long-term view of the town center's future and anticipates more intense private and public investments to occur with the establishment of improved transit service in the area. An important component of the plan is the consideration of improvements to the pedestrian realm throughout the town center. These improvements create a convenient and safe links between the town center's businesses, services, and transit with the surrounding residential neighborhoods. In conjunction with the preferred design framework plan CD+A created a town center implementation matrix, which provides an overview of both near and long-term activities of private property owners and public agencies that will contribute to the implementation of the Othello Town Center. The matrix is integrated into the City's Neighborhood Plan Implementation database, so that development and improvement activities can be coordinated and tracked over time.
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