South Main

CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

SOUTH MAIN

SOUTH MAIN

CNU CHARTER 1 AWARDS 2016

CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

Truly sustainable design must be rooted in and evolve from adaptations to local climate, light, flora, fauna, materials and human culture as manifest in indigenous urban, architectural and landscape patterns.

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CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

Fact sheet Submission Category I. The Region: Metropolis, City and Town II. Neighborhood, District and Corridor III. Block, Street and Building

City and State in which the project is located.

Buena Vista, Colorado

Has your plan been adopted or broken ground?

Adopted

Broken Ground

Neither

If neither, why? N/A What percentage has been built/implemented? 20% Estimated date of completion, if applicable: 20+ years Land Area (in acres): 41.5 Project Cost (optional): Approximately $200 million

Project Characteristics

Check all those that apply to your entry:

Civic Uses (indicate type and size): Park (1+ acres); Riverfront Trail (1/3rd mile); Outdoor venues (varied sizes)

Public policy program

Parks/Open Space (indicate type and size): Park (2 acres); Riverfront Trail (1/3rd mile);

Regional/town plan

Number of Residential Units: Zoned for 483; 65+ built

Transit-oriented development

Residential Unit Types: Single family (de)attached; rowhouses; mixed-income housing; apartments

Incorporates universal design principles Incorporates and meets AIA2030 Challenge

Retail, Office, Industrial Square Footage: There is approximately 4,500 sqft of restaurant space; 7,000 sqft of retail; and 5,000 professional office space

Greenfield/previously undeveloped site

Transect Zone(s) (optional): T1 through T5

Infill/previously developed sites

Placemaking plan (exclusively public space, civic buildings, or infrastructure) Includes affordable/subsidized /social housing if so, how much?

Qualifies for LEED-ND certification - if so, which level?

Qualifies for other LEED certification - if so, list here

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CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

PROJECT DESCRIPTION During a week-long charrette, numerous citizens and stakeholders of Buena Vista helped shape the vision for the property. The founders, along with local residents, town leaders, and the design team worked collaboratively to formulate design concepts. Key principles established during the charrette which have since been incorporated within the project include: maintaining public access to the river, creating a high-quality riverfront space; establishing visual and physical connections with Main Street and downtown Buena Vista, and creating a walkable environment through a mixture of uses and network of pedestrian connections. To ensure that the vision for South Main was realized, Development Standards were prepared to accompany the plan.

Architectural design shall derive from local, time-honored building typologies.

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As competitive kayakers and avid outdoor enthusiasts, the founders of South Main envisioned their property as an environmentally-friendly new neighborhood that would provide public access to both the riverfront and a world-class white water park. The project’s Master Plan for the property connects the Town of Buena Vista to the Arkansas River.

Neighborhood streets are oriented to create views to the mountains as well as to the riverfront. The South Main Square, which abuts a new riverfront park, is surrounded by mixed-use buildings, and provides a central gathering space for residents and visitors. The plan also features a variety of sustainable elements including a mix of uses and housing types, employing locally-influenced, time-tested architecture.

CNU CHARTER livingAWARD in South

The Master Plan and corresponding Development Standards were approved in 2005. Construction has continued for several years, with businesses now well established in the growing neighborhood.

The community currently has a pair of restaurants, boutiques, art galleries, and professional offices (medical, legal, and financial). Aside from the existing Surf Chateau hotel, there are current plans to construct a second hotel. At approximately 31,000 sqft, it will be the largest building in the community.

The hotel will be situated in the main square, boasting a restaurant overlooking the Arkansas River.

The river corridor running through the South Main property was donated to the Town of Buena Vista as permanent, public parkland. With the assistance of a state grant, numerous improvements to the river and trail network have been completed. A second grant has provided funding for several recreational climbing boulders throughout the neighborhood used by residents and visitors alike.

“We love to walk, and Main 2016 allows us to walk most anywhere – for work, errands, and just for fun. Everything is so accessible from South Main – local businesses, great hiking and mountain biking trails, and the river of course. It’s just a great and healthy lifestyle that we have here.”

Wil and Christine Franz, South Main Homeowners

“I’ve lived all over the world, and I’ve searched high and low for a spot like this, from the alps to Australia to the Pacific Northwest, Vermont, and Montana. It’s huge for me to have access to the outdoors right on my doorstep: skiing, biking, running, bouldering, stand up paddling, cross-country skiing.”

Angela Kuepper, South Main Homeowner

“For somebody who has lived here for some time, I’m just in awe at all of it…I just stopped by the Buena Vista Roastery coffee shop, and I looked up and down Main Street and there were people everywhere. Young people, young families. And that’s what South Main has brought.”

Dennis Giese, Chairman of the Board, Chaffee County Commissioner District 1 SOUTH MAIN

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CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

response to charter principles From the Charter Preamble:

“... communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions...reestablishing the relationship between the art of building and the making of community, through citizen-based participatory planning and design.”

From the Neighborhood, The District, and The Corridor: 11.

Many activities of daily living should occur within walking distance, allowing independence to those who do not drive, especially the elderly and the young.

Interconnected networks of streets should be designed to encourage walking, reduce the number and length of automobile trips, and conserve energy.

12. Within neighborhoods, a broad range of housing types and price levels can bring people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction, strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic community.

14. Appropriate

building densities and land uses should be within walking distance of transit stops, permitting public transit to become a viable alternative to the automobile.

15. Concentrations of civic, institutional, and commercial activity should be embedded in neighborhoods and districts, not isolated in remote, single-use complexes.

17. A range of parks, from tot-lots and village greens to ball fields and community gardens, should be distributed within neighborhoods. Conservation areas and open lands should be used to define and connect different neighborhoods and districts.

From the Canons:

Truly sustainable design must be rooted in and evolve from adaptations to local climate, light, flora, fauna, materials and human culture as manifest in indigenous urban, architectural and landscape patterns...Design must preserve the proximate relationships between urbanized areas and both agricultural and natural lands in order to provide for local food sources; maintain local watersheds; a clean and ready water supply; preserve clean air; allow access to local natural resources; conserve natural habitat and to guard regional biodiversity.... Architecture and landscape design derive from local climate, flora, fauna, topography.”

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Numerous elements within the project’s design and development embody key principles stated in the Charter and its supplemental Canons.

• The neighborhood’s layout takes advantage of surrounding views and natural amenities.

• Corner buildings with chamfered edges and a clock tower form a signature entrance to one of the neighborhood’s most intimate streets • Front porches reinforce a strong sense of community and take advantage of cool summer breezes.

• Inclusions such as vegetable gardens transform a backyard setting, and are a reflection of the community’s pursuit of greater sustainability.

• Re-purposed boulders from the natural environment provide a great recreational opportunity for residents and visitors.

• South Main’s architecture is built in the mountain vernacular tradition found in Buena Vista and surrounding towns such as Salida, CO. • Well-designed, well-crafted architecture and distinctive street fixtures are essential to creating a quality sense of place.

• Narrow, pedestrian-dominant, cobble-stoned streets are part of the neighborhood’s rich menu of walkable street types.

• A new public park and trail system along the neighborhood’s Arkansas River frontage was built and donated to the town. South Main Street frames views of the prominent courthouse cupola in downtown Buena Vista and the Collegiate Peaks beyond.

• The high sense of spatial enclosure and other trafficcalming measures along pedestrian-dominant streets promote low vehicular speeds, allowing pedestrians to move freely throughout the space.

• The neighborhood’s park system includes a mountainsensitive palette of native landscaping, reducing the need for irrigation.

CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

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CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

lessons learned During South Main’s conception, the Town of Buena Vista was growing very slowly, seeing only about 12 applications for building permits per year. South Main’s developers realized the need to demonstrate the neighborhood’s unique characteristics and potential for investors to share in their vision. Several key lessons included:

1. Build key public spaces first

They built key public spaces right at the start of phase one, including the main River Park and Bouldering Park. When people come for these events they get to walk South Main’s streets, learn about the vision for the neighborhood and experience what makes it such a great place to live.

2. Show full range of the built environment in the first phase

The developers also sought to demonstrate the neighborhood’s full diversity of urban fabric from the very beginning to gain momentum and illustrate the site’s full potential. The first phase includes three-story mixed-use shopfront buildings, attached rowhouses, a pub, and a boutique hotel nestled right next to large single family houses, bungalows and cottages.

3. Find a way to do a very skinny street

Inspired by visits to great historic urbanism both domestically and abroad, the developers wanted to include a special skinny street in phase one which would set South Main apart from the all-too typical, overly-wide streets of most suburban sprawl development in Colorado. The picturesque cobblestone-paved Swift Street is the result – a mere 26’-wide building face to building face.

4. On the ground testing and adjustment of vistas

The developers and design team realized that the nascent South Main neighborhood would seem larger and more complete by incorporating visual connections to the surrounding historic Town and natural landscape. One of the most dramatic is the long, framed view looking west down Main Street toward the Town’s historic silver courthouse cupola, silhouetted against a particularly striking notch in the distant “Collegiate Peaks” grouping of mountains, with “Birthday Peak” visible centered even further beyond.

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CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

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CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

CONTEXT 1. The pre-project aerial photograph (right) shows: • The overlooked and unkempt riverfront site – used for decades as a trash dump before being acquired by South Main’s developers.

• The Arkansas River running along the east boundary of the site.

• The preserved BLM lands and “Sleeping Indian” mountain to the east of the River.

• Town park land to the north and west of the site.

• The historic Town grid wrapping the north, west and south sides of the site.

• Buena Vista’s historic Main Street and cupola-topped historic courthouse.

2. A preliminary conceptual rendering (far right) depicts an aerial view looking across the Arkansas River to the South Main neighborhood. The South Main Square in the foreground, serves as a central gathering place in the new neighborhood, the connecting tissue expanding Buena Vista to the Arkansas River.

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CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

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CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

SITE PLAN The Illustrative Plan to the right depicts the 483-unit community, which maintains public access to the river, creating a high-quality riverfront space.

Visually and physically, the design connects Main Street and downtown Buena Vista, creating a walkable environment through a mixture of uses and network of pedestrian connections.

The site is located where the orientation of the Town’s historic street grid shifts. South Main’s master plan extends the Town’s streets seamlessly across the site while reconciling this shift. The resulting offsets and subtle deflections are used to create a series of focal ‘postcard views’ that lead visitors step-by-step through the neighborhood all the way to the public River Park.

Fronts of buildings face the River Park and Trail, reinforcing them as fully public spaces.

Views are framed of the 14,000 foot tall “Collegiate Peaks” mountains to the West, and to the “Sleeping Indian” mountain backdrop to the east. South Main Street is oriented to capture a view of the Town’s historic courthouse cupola silhouetted against a particularly stunning mountain vista beyond.

More active uses and urban building types in the neighborhood are concentrated along South Main Street and the River Park. Other areas of the neighborhood are optimized for tranquility. A green finger extends from the Town’s Park to the north and curves south and then east through the neighborhood, leading to the River Park. This forms a complete green loop for biking and walking.

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CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

Clockwise (Top left): Street view of varied housing types during Winter; a mixed-use shopfront on the corner of South Main and Swift Street; view from the narrow, pedestrian-friendly cobblestone Swift St; outdoor musical event in open public space.

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CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

A primary task of all urban architecture and landscape design is the physical definition of streets and public spaces as places of shared use.

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SOUTH MAIN

CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

Far Left: South Main Street is oriented to capture a view of the Town’s historic courthouse cupola silhouetted against a particularly stunning mountain vista beyond.

Clockwise (Top left): Concentrations of civic, institutional, and commercial activity; mixed-use and varied building and housing types demonstrate a broad range of architectural design derived from local, time-honored building typologies; Bouldering Park creates an active, public space that blends the built and natural environments.

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CNU CHARTER AWARDS 2016

Clockwise (Top left): Tactical urbanism utilizing pedestrian-friendly streets for a marathon; broad range of housing types and on-street parking against a natural backdrop; the River Park spectator area for kayaking events; a vegetable garden transforms a backyard setting, reflecting the community’s pursuit of sustainability.

Far Right: Elevated southwestern view from hiking and biking trails overlooking the South Main neighborhood.

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SOUTH MAIN

CNU CHARTER AWARD 2016

Buildings, neighborhoods, towns and regions shall serve to maximize social interaction, economic and cultural activity, spiritual development, energy, creativity and time, leading to a high quality of life and sustainability.

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