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AIA Pittsburgh - Regional and Urban Design 2008 Honor Award Master Planning and Architectural Design Urban retail development project. Phase II of the development includes the architectural design for four (4) buildings totaling 86,600 square feet, with 360 structured parking spaces. This project responds to the developer's challenge to create a vibrant urban shopping experience on the periphery of two neighborhoods. Aspects of the design solution build upon the unique conditions of the site and its relationship to the surrounding neighborhoods. The developer, The Mosites Company, set out to leverage the success of the first phase of new retail, Whole Foods Grocer, by adding buildings and sufficient parking to attract national retailers to a new urban shopping center. Several of these "big box" retailers were unwilling to give up the suburban shopping center mentality of internalized buildings and acres of asphalt parking. In response the project creates a hybrid solution intended to accommodate the standard "box" while minimizing the impact of parking, addressing the pedestrian streetscape and extending the vitality of the adjacent shopping districts. The site is located adjacent to a railroad right of way and bus corridor that physically separates East Liberty and Shadyside. The project will help to stitch together these two neighborhoods by connecting over the railroad tracks and extending the well established neighborhood shopping along Ellsworth Avenue directly to the Eastside development. The solution takes advantage of the 15' change in elevation at Highland Avenue to create an upper level "ground plane" experience that accommodates second level retail oriented toward Shadyside and directly connected to Ellsworth Avenue with a pedestrian bridge. At the same time, the lower level orients in the opposite direction addressing Centre Avenue and East Liberty. External public circulation opportunities connect the two. |
