Second Site Study

I appreciate the feedback from several of you on my first site study. @Al thought that the cars were dominating the middle and that a green space should be the center and parking put to the side. @Phil suggested I try podium parking (ground level parking tucked under the buildings) @Bill suggested I look at more of the context around the site and not have such a weak corner (eg parking lot) near the cul-de-sac. I also learned a bit more about firetruck requirements. The trucks like to pull through without backing up, but can use a 'hammerhead' to turn around. Pulling through means going off the site, so I have not explored that yet.

The first plan was trying to explore the idea of a surface parking lot that could later be a parking structure. These plans abandon the idea of ever having a parking structure.

Community green space between rows of dwellings.

Here are two new versions. One I'm calling the Long Alley because it puts an alley with garages behind all the townhouses. The other I'm calling Interior Court because it has a courtyard for two rows of townhouses.  Interior court was inspired by this image of the Berea EcoVillage.

Long Alley

 Long Alley still has the problem that the center of the site is devoted to the car. It does address the 'weak corner' at the cul-de-sac and it makes lots of use of pedestal parking to avoid most of the parking lot. I'm not to wild about this, it looks like a row of little boxes and a warren of little roads.


Interior Court

Interior Court has several garden areas, but it might not work for fire access -- one alley requires backing out 150 feet. It also requires some cooperation with the northern neighbor to make a shared alley on the property line, but the neighbor may want to cooperate to better access the eastern portion of their property (across the view shed). This plan is probably short of parking, esp for the building at the cul-de-sac.

First parking lot and building site study

For several reasons I am focusing SODO Moscow on the southern portion of the "South Block" (blue outline).

• Its a smaller chunk to finance
• Moscow's Intermodal Transit Center is considering the northern portion of the site. (reportedly the site is priority 3)

Here is the site, in the larger city context. (Original drawing by Bill Belknap exploring how existing property lines would need to be shifted to add street rights of way. This boundary change has not been agreed among the owners 12.29.2010)

Within the southern portion, this is my first study of parking lot and building footprints. Several questions and issues have become aperant.

• The 530 foot dimension needs to be shortened to contribute half to making of a public path. (need to see the design overlay for path width)
• The creek side needs a pedestrian path. 10 feet setback from the property line is shown for this purpose. 
• Can an easement with UI help widen this path?
• How will fire access work along this side?
• The eastern face is built to the property line. Fire access is assumed in the right of way along the old Main St alignment.
• The northern side shows a 15 foot pedestrian path - otherwise build to property line would close off all pedestrian access in an E-W route.

First sketch 12.29.2010 includes:

• 19 row houses (ave width 22 feet, depth 45 feet)
• one parking stall for each row house (either in garage or in alley)
• 44 stall parking lot interior to the block (at grade). Need to explore converting this space to structured parking.
• 4 building sites: 7000, 6700, 2900 and ?? sqft footprints.
• A 10x24 foot loading dock off the end of the alley.
• Two mid-block passageways 10 feet wide.

A vision for creekside row houses

A possible design for the south edge of SODO is row houses facing Paradise Creek, with a pedestrian path (but no vehicular access) to the front of the houses. There would be an alley and parking at the rear, see this first attempt at a parking and site plan.

I remembered that we have friends in St Andrews Scotland who live in a similar place. Thanks to Google Street View, here is a view from Kinnessburn Rd looking across the Kinness Burn (creek) at the row of houses. This link gives you another view, of Duck Crossing B&B.

The Smart Growth Manual (check it out at Amazon) section 12.6 gives more descriptions about what a row house ought to be and do. It defines rowhouses as "party wall houses placed on narrow lots, typically 16-30 feet... Rowhouses place a garage or carport on a rear lane... The garden is a key feature, it requires walls or fences for privacy...  The rear lane is also essential as rowhouses with front garages destroy any prospect of pedestrian life... Rowhouses have short front setbacks..."