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Weaving a Livable Downtown The City of Bellevue, the Bellevue Downtown Association, and community leaders have been pursuing a vision of a truly livable downtown for more than 20 years. That vision was freshly captured in 2002 and extended to the year 2020 in the City’s update of its Downtown Plan.
More
exciting still for all of us who love the city and have invested
ourselves in its future is the unmistakable evidence of that vision
becoming a reality. After decades of planning and design work that
has too seldom been realized in bricks and mortar or executed urban
design, we’ve passed a critical tipping point: Not only are
we seeing an exciting number of large-scale, high-profile mixed-use/residential
projects either under construction or in the final stages of design,
those projects are being designed to relate to each other. We’re
at last seeing the creation of the kind of integrated, inviting
and enlivening urban spaces that combine to form a livable community.
Its engaging mix of unique storefronts, coffee shops, restaurants and small retail shops wouldn’t have been successful without the presence of its nearby high-density residential projects to supply pedestrian vitality and a sense of round-the-clock security. Livable downtowns feature well-conceived buildings and urban design that allow access to other buildings and streets, as well as artful, inviting, surprising public spaces for both interaction and moments of quiet. They also contain a variety of retail spaces that animate and activate the sidewalk-level environment. Bellevue’s future will see more of what’s already happening in the Ashwood District, where restaurant destinations such as Andiamo and Chutneys provide great dining experiences not only for the downtown lunch crowd but for an ever-increasing number of nearby residents. Livable downtowns offer a wide variety of attractive, easily accessed choices for their residents, workers and visitors. And they don’t just happen: they come about through the efforts of enlightened developers and City officials committed to doing what’s necessary to create a living, breathing downtown.
All
of those ingredients are evident in downtown Bellevue’s recent
surge of development activity, of which Lincoln Square’s dramatic
rise from the ashes is only the most prominent example. CollinsWoerman
and Weisman Design Group are enjoying the rare opportunity to work
together on three projects – Su Development’s Ashwood
Commons and 1020 Tower, and Wasatch Development’s Wasatch
Superblock – that will combine with Lincoln Square and a number
of other projects to redefine not only Bellevue’s skyline
but its street-level experience. Working together on the architectural
and landscape design of these projects has provided us innumerable
chances, small and large, to integrate the buildings and the spaces
between them with the emerging fabric of the city’s downtown.
You can see an example of this integration in action in the new
design for Ashwood Park, which offers a public-oriented gateway
to the park, creates a unique forecourt inviting future audiences
to the neighborhood theater at the base of 1020 Tower, and adds
another link in the chain of memorable urban spaces and parks along
the NE 10th Street corridor.
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