We were asked to make a proposal for the use of a twenty acre outparcel from a much larger property. The outparcel is bounded on the east by small bluffs overlooking the Indian River Lagoon on the east coast of Florida. We asked to increase the number of housing units allocated to the parcel by about fifty percent, to double the commercial/retail space, and to add a conference hotel that had been planned for another part of the property. With this increased program of roughly one million square feet, we were able to create a town center with an appropriate density and mix of uses. This also allowed the principal developer to reduce densities on less valuable parcels farther from the water.

Four blocks at the center of the parcel were designed to pinwheel around a central square of about three quarters of an acre, adding value to the interior of the parcel which has no direct views of the water. Typically, the square is approached on small streets that skirt the edge of the square like the east-west streets of Savannah. As the streets are double dog-legs they typically terminate or offset at the far side of the square, providing nicely scaled short streets, like lower Church Street in Charleston. The exception to this pattern is the street that enters the square from the boulevard on the west side of the parcel, passes the north edge of the square, and ends at the marina on the lagoon.

The retail square footage is mostly on the square, or lining the mid-block courtyards just off the north edge of the square, or flanking the street leading from the square to the marina. Building heights are generally lower on the streets around the square, with one to four stories of residential use above ground floor stores. The stores are typically shaded by arcades that distinguish the commercial streets and the treed square. Required parking for the retail component is accommodated without recourse to structured parking, though it requires a single large parking lot on the north side of the town center. This parking lot is effectively isolated from

the square as one of the watercolors clearly shows. The residential program varies greatly in height. There is a one hundred foot height limit and the taller buildings are toward the water, and north of the retail blocks. Units average 2000 square feet. The residential buildings self park, off the streets.

The open space previously allocated to this site has been broken up and distributed in a pattern that both makes the scale of the open spaces more useable, but also makes them proximate to all blocks, further increasing the chance that they will be used. We reduced the size of the streets and the squares so they would feel shaded and useable on hot days. Streets vary from forty to sixty feet from building wall to building wall. The smaller courtyards are about fifty feet square open to the sky and eighty feet from building wall to building wall, roughly comparable to the main courtyard at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. The waterfront park is roughly the size of the smaller squares of Savannah. The wider streets are the size of Worth Avenue in Palm Beach.

We made every attempt to integrate the hotel with adjacent blocks of mixed use buildings. While the hotel drop off is on the main boulevard, there is a secondary entrance on the north side that brings people from a broad porch facing toward the central square,
up a flight of stairs and into the second level courtyard that is the heart of the hotel. The courtyard is a hundred feet open to the sky and one hundred and forty feet from wall to wall, larger than the main courtyard at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. But unlike the
Breakers which sits in isolation as a resort hotel, this hotel is plugged directly into the streets so guests can use the town center, and non guests can underwrite the costs of hotel restaurants. There is a large lawn on the water side of the hotel that opens onto the marina. The conference and spa facilities buffer the hotel on the south side from a heavily traveled state road that leads to the barrier island.