Transit Village
— by Jeffrey Wisniewski — 15 February 2008 — 1 comment below »
AndersonPacific’s Hercules Bayfront plan includes a transit village on the north side of Refugio Creek with a warehouse-style feel. Below is a rendering of the transit village…
The main parking structure is shown (in the image above) on the far right, located on the periphery of the development. Under this plan, commuters would be forced to park in that garage (or in a few other garages located below buildings) and then walk towards the rail or ferry terminals, passing shops and cafes along the way. The design would encourage an organically-grown and sustainable marketplace, and a location for Herculeans to congregate on weekends.
Renderings and plans for AndersonPacific’s Transit Village are available on their website (PDF).
Not only is the AP garage in a better location in a more well thought out plan, architecturally it just looks better than the szabo garage. the szabo alternative is simply your typical ugly parking garage, with a cheap convention center commplex stuck on the top. It screams out “CHEAP!”
From street level, the AP garage appears to inorporate a nice brick facade that wraps around the structure to obscure its function as a parking garage, and matches the architecture of the surrounding structures, with a tower on one corner. I saw a similar design somewhere else, and you don’t even realize it is a parking structure when you are walking by.