Hey Everyone,

After a terrific few days in Denver, I have made it back to Boston and am settling in for a two week stretch of thesis writing.  As noted earlier, we were in Denver to compete against three other graduate teams in round two of the 2009 Urban Land Institute / Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition.  We had a great time throughout the process: meeting the other teams, working on our presentation, eating lunch with Mr. Hines, etc.    Finding out that our proposal for Panorama Station won the competition and the $50,000 team prize was truly icing on the cake.

Appreciate Steve breaking the news on his blog.  As a side note, if you haven’t already, you should check out the videos of Jeff Speck’s presentation he posted – good stuff.

Thanks to Mr. Hines and ULI staff for hosting such a great competition. And thank you to everyone for the congratulations via email, facebook, etc.

ULI has yet to release pictures and press releases from the competition, but in the meantime here are a few new images from our project.

Our proposal for a new transit-oriented development to replace an existing big-box and strip retail center.

Integrating the station plaza platform with an iconic pedestrian bridge creates a memorable destination and strong sense of place.

The competition required that existing tenants – like Sam’s and Kmart – be integrated into the design.  Here this is accomplished by providing generous street-front entrances to sub-grade retail sales floors.  Elevator connections to structured parking in the center of the block continue to provide convenient access for store patrons.

Got some great news yesterday and wanted to share it with you.  We are one of four finalist teams that have made it through to round two of the 2009 ULI Hines Urban Design competition. Which means we will travel to Denver in April to compete for a shot at the $50,000 first prize.  Really excited and look forward to working some more on this project. Also, now that the results of round one have been announced, I can share with you everything we worked on.  And I am sure to say we, as it was definitely a team effort.

THE TEAM

Sarah Snider, Master of City Planning / MIT
Eric Komppa, MBA / University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jesse Hunting, Master of City Planning / MIT
Duncan McIlvaine, M.Arch / MIT
Blair Humphreys, Master of City Planning / MIT

ABOUT THE PROJECT

This is our complete design board.  The board measures 51″ x 22″ – or six 17″ x 11″ sheets.  In addition to this we were required to turn in two separate 17″ x 11″ sheets, one with financials and one “day in the life of” sheet conveying life in the year 2050 (click here to see it).  I have chopped up the board pictured above into separate images to fit on your screen below.  The proposal is for an approx. 80 acre site surrounding Denver’s Alameda light rail station.  The northern portion of the site is currently a fairly typical big box retail layout, while the southern portion has a range of tenants connected to the Denver Design District. The primary challenge was to redesign the site to take advantage of the light rail station without displacing any of the existing tenants.  The boards are meant to be self-explanatory (i.e. we weren’t present when the judges viewed them), so I haven’t provided any commentary but if you have questions, just let me know.  Thanks!

note: this post is image heavy so it may load a bit slow.