Walnut Creek's Broadway Plaza due to grow up

Walnut Creek's Broadway Plaza due to grow up

From the day it opened in 1951, Walnut Creek’s Broadway Plaza development embodied in the landscape of the Bay Area suburbs.

It debuted at middle-class boutiques along new roads, parking lots on all sides. By middle age, there were garages and a stylish Nordström. Now there is a glittering white Neiman Marcus and a proposed makeover that would make room for not only new shops, but also 200 apartments or condominiums.

The details vary across the region, but the point is the same. Even as advocates and naysayers quibble about whether suburbs should grow up as well as outside the cultural pressure priming pump. More people looking for city life, but not necessarily the rough edges of a San Francisco or Oakland. Well located in suburban areas open to the switch is ready to see the result.

in Walnut Creek, part of the appeal of this city at the historic crossroads of Contra Costa County is that it took shape before suburbanization was a predictable March in independent subdivisions and shopping centers. Downtown is a lazy grating with ridges that step up to Mount Diablo, and on the perimeter, resulting multi-family dwellings from the 1970s are shrouded in trees

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Residential opportunities

house is an opportunity for Broadway Plaza is among the 1,500 homes either approved or proposed in this core. Projects range from 596-unit “transit village” envisioned in the Walnut Creek BART Station to several lots where single-family homes will be replaced by a handful of condominiums.

fresh twist is that housing developers prowling before online, where small blocks and modestly scaled commercial buildings of varying quality still set the tone.

An example is at Bonanza Street between Locust Street and North California Boulevard. There, in the same block as the city’s performing arts center, has Laconia Development filed plans with the city to replace a bank building and two cafes with 143 apartments over a high retail base.

“We think people want to live in the city center for the same reason, they live in center cities around the world,” said Laconia Paul Menzies, who built towers in Seattle and San Diego. If the project is approved, the goal is to start construction by next summer. “There is a tremendous scene right outside the door, and Bart is a few blocks away …. San Francisco is a great place, but not everyone wants to live there.”

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To be sure, similar allegations made in the real estate implosion of 2008. Menzies’ website was convicted of residential and then as well. Two condominium complexes that were built contain units that are currently being leased instead.

But in the same way as the long-stalled in San Francisco towers breaking ground, Walnut Creek approved several projects before the recession comes back to life. They have been joined by such newcomers as a 300-unit complex at the former headquarters instead of Longs Drugs, which now goes through an environmental review.

“It is a city and it is changing,” says Ron Gerber, Walnut Creek, economic development manager. “Exactly how it grows, and there will be there, we do not know.”

Another question to Walnut Creek and other dilapidated suburbs is this: How would a more densely populated center feel

The subtext of the debate on Broadway Plaza, as in the past month has been the subject of public hearings and a draft environmental impact report.

At present there are 800,000 square meters of retail space and two parking garages on 25 acres east of South Main Street and south of Mount Diablo Boulevard, an area divided by a public street named, yes, Broadway Plaza.

Developers MaceRich want to repeat things by going up and in – closing the street and replace one-storey retail buildings with higher structures in the middle pedestrian lanes and squares. One option would add 300,000 square meters of retail space. The second will add 200,000 square feet of shops and a similar amount of space for housing. No building would exceed today’s 50-foot height limit.

plans so far include broad strokes rather than fine-grained design, and there is skepticism in the town hall on the concept of removing the roadway. It is a legitimate concern: When you remove a public street, you undermine genuine public access. At the same time, now Broadway is flanked to the north and west by retail buildings having outposts all from Tiffany to H & M, Pottery Barn for Giants Dugout. An imaginative network of paths through the Broadway Plaza able to produce what is outside, not just pull customers in.

The future of housing

There is also skepticism to the idea of ​​housing. There should not be.

MaceRich seeking a 10 – to 15-year development agreement, including the top floor housing as an option makes sense. Housing is already mixed with Bay Area retail scene in Emeryville and Petaluma, and San Jose’s Santana Row. Today, such a property at Broadway Plaza be wrong. A decade from now it may seem like the natural way to top things off.

Our suburbs will never take the strong taste of San Francisco’s North Beach, or sprout 600-foot towers. Backyards and Cul-de-sacs do not go away. But the cultural concept of one-size-fits-all was obsolete a generation ago. We have opportunity now to explore new definitions of all the suburbs can be.

This article shown on page A – 1 in the San Francisco Chronicle

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