Past Events
Focus Group #3
February 7, 2009
Topic: Community Space, Open Space and Circulation
This third community-wide session garnered the largest number of participants to date, and involved the newly-selected master planning landscape architects, GLS (Gary Strang and Dean Williams). The goals of the discussion were to:
- Gather information from Residents and neighbors about how they move around, through, on and off of Potrero Hill
- Get everyone thinking about the circulation connections that can and should be made (walking, driving, bicycling, and by bus) for traveling into and out of the rebuilt Terrace/Annex development
- Begin to have Residents and neighbors identify the community facilities and open space amenities that are most important to them, where those common uses should be located, and how (and where) they should be clustered
- We began the session by having participants interview one another (someone they didn’t know) about a typical trip they take regularly – how and where they travel – and assess what works well on that trip and what doesn’t.
- We then formed into groups – eight small groups this time – and each group worked through a two-step exercise:
- First we overlaid on a blank map of Potrero Terrace & Annex the driving and walking routes that could be established to connect key points at the edge of the development (connections to streets, to public transit, to freeway on-ramps; streets, paths and stairs).
- Then each group took on the challenging task of prioritizing among a broad array of common facilities and uses – open spaces, gathering spaces, facilities (like child care, retail, the Family Resource Center, and many others) – and placing these uses at various locations throughout the Terrace/Annex site.
As with the earlier sessions on other topics, each group then reported back to the gathering on the results of their exercise. Fred Pollack, the primary master plan architect, summarized the commonalities between the eight presentations – universal intent to re-connect the site with the rest of neighborhood and the City, and significant interest in a range of common spaces and amenities – after which we adjourned to a hearty lunch of delicious Mexican food and smaller discussions.
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