Building Visions

Master Plans Remain Prominent Development Tool

As the development boom spreads across the region, developers and municipalities are keeping architects busy in the design of master and site plans that apply organizing themes to large tracts.

by Katherine S. Robertson

The surge in redevelopment efforts across the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut region has also led to an expanded horizon of opportunities for architects to draw up plans that transform a single large site into new complexes and communities.

The discipline most often called site planning or master planning is getting ample attention thanks to high-profile redevelopments at the World Trade Center site – which will house 10 million sq ft of offices, retail spaces, the Sept. 11 memorial, and a new transportation hub – and Brooklyn’s $4 billion Atlantic Yards mixed-use complex, anchored by a new 18,000-seat arena.

Indeed, designers and planners are sketching out concepts to create community environments in master plans across the region, from the Storrs Center development in Mansfield, Conn. [see related article], to plans to redevelop a large swath of Yonkers.

Dozens of design firms in the region market themselves as “master planners,” an architectural specialty that largely hovers at the conceptual stage, long before façade materials are chosen and interior features are sculpted. It is a field that most often involves many players, from government agencies to private developers, along with ample input from local residents and no small amount of debate about what constitutes the best development approach.

While the broad concept is hardly new, many real estate observers say site or master planning in the region still draws on some of the changes fomented by the design of Manhattan's Battery Park City 25 years ago.

Many credit the community at the southwestern tip of the crowded island as a turning point in urban planning, because it augured a shift toward plans that integrate public space, roads and streetscapes, buildings, and commercial uses rather than a focus solely on the individual structures.

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Over the two decades since Battery Park City hit the radar screen, many civic leaders are embracing site or master plans where developments have a core or a main street.

Garvin says the term “master plan” should be reserved for neighborhood-scale projects, rather than a single development site, which would get “site planning.” But firms in the industry have been using the term “master plan” somewhat broadly to refer to any case in which a large tract is being mapped out for future development.

The drawings typically come at an early stage to cover items such as the massing of buildings, streetscapes, and general layouts of multiple structures. They also typically undergo various revisions long before the architects who will design the final structures get involved.

In many cases, municipalities are now hosting design “charette” sessions meant to collect community input. Keeping local residents near a redevelopment in touch with the plans is a smart way to smooth over anxieties and differences, says Shing-Fu Hsueh, mayor of West Windsor, N.J., which is planning a 350-acre project around the Princeton Junction train station.

“The majority of residents are afraid of change,” he adds. “Once the public has the numbers and understands the implications, they will come around to support the idea.”

Master plans also form the core of redevelopment efforts to revitalize neglected downtown districts in cities such as Yonkers, Hartford, Newark, White Plains, Stamford, and Bridgeport.

One example is the redevelopment of a former Pitney Bowes complex on 82 acres along Stamford’s waterfront by Antares Investment Partners and Left Bank Development, which last year retained Cooper Robertson & Partners of New York and Boston-based Sasaki Associates to develop a master plan.

Farther east in Bridgeport, Midtown Equities of New York is planning the $1.5 billion, 52-acre Steel Point, a mixed-use, transit-oriented development that will encompass 7 million sq ft upon build-out seven years from now. The project would recapture a mostly vacant, 52-acre industrial waterfront property by adding 3,500 residential units, a 400-slip marina, 160,000 sq ft of office space, 1.1 million sq ft of retail space, and a 2,800-ft.-long public promenade.

And in Yonkers, city officials have signed up three developers – Cappelli Enterprises of Valhalla, N.Y., Struever Bros. of Baltimore, and Fidelco Realty of New Jersey – for a plan to redevelop the city’s downtown waterfront with various office, residential, and retail uses, anchored by a new minor league baseball stadium. The plan could draw up to $3 billion in real estate projects by incorporating redevelopment of parts of the downtown business district, according to city officials.

Response to Development “Chaos”      

Modern master planning that focuses on core communities is partly a reaction to the suburban landscapes that created cities without centers, a phenomenon that occurred at the same time that urban cores were drained of people and activity in recent decades, says Bradley Walters of Princeton-based Hillier Architects. The result was a demand for development plans that could bring a sense of place to newer communities, while restoring a sense of life to old ones.

This thinking is an evolution from urban planning’s prior focus on individual buildings, says Stanton Eckstut, founding principal of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects and one of the master planners on Battery Park City. The emphasis is no longer on the icon, but rather on making a public environment, he says.

A recent plan that incorporates many elements of modern master planning is the 74.6-acre Riverside South project on Manhattan’s West Side that redeveloped a former rail yard. Already halfway to build-out, the 7.9-million-sq-ft residential development has grown from the roots of a master plan developed in the early 1990s. It was melded through the input of civic groups, local community boards, city agencies, and the private development parties. Even when ownership of the site changed hands in 2005, the master plan’s overarching vision of 16 residential towers and various parks and streets stayed intact.

The effort to redevelop the World Trade Center site in Manhattan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is also a prime example of modern master planning. It started in 2002 with a plan to fit five office buildings encompassing 10 million sq ft, a memorial to the victims of Sept. 11, a new multimodal transportation hub, and various parks and retail spaces, all of which were elements in the concept prepared by New York’s Studio Daniel Libeskind, which won a design competition.

While the details of the plan – from placement of some features to the sizes and shapes of individual elements – have changed considerably in the years since, the overall guiding principles from the original concept, as well as the massing and placement of structures, remain.

Sometimes firms combine on master plans, as is the case on Arverne East, the last of three New York City-driven developments in the Arverne Urban Renewal Area of Far Rockaway in Queens. The New York office of HOK is overseeing master planning, landscape architecture, and commercial and retail design, in tandem with Curtis + Ginsberg Architects of New York, which is focusing on the residential component. The city also chose a team of Bluestone Organization, L&M Equities, and Triangle Development as project developers.

The 47-acre complex will have 1,600 mixed-income homes, 300,000 sq ft of commercial and retail space, and various transit plazas, and would aim to meet LEED silver status.

From Battery Park City to Bridgeport 

The story of Battery Park City has all of the classic master planning ingredients. For nearly a decade, the 92 acres of prime waterfront real estate at the southern tip of Manhattan sat as a pile of broken piers and backfill from the World Trade Center excavation effort in the late 1960s, the victim of civic dispute, political wrangling, municipal inaction, and lack of developer interest.

Though the state chartered the Battery Park City Authority to oversee the development in 1968, no plan stuck. Then in 1979, the authority issued a Request for Proposals for architects to map out a new vision, and a pair of newly minted designers, Eckstut and Alexander Cooper, won the 12-week assignment.

“We needed to come up with a plan that was credible,” Eckstut says. “It wasn’t the lack of a marketplace that was the problem with Battery Park City. It was a poor plan.”

Their plan eschewed the building-centered design philosophy of the day and, instead, focused on the space and the integrity of the area.

The success of the plan they developed is evident in the booming development that is approaching its final build-out and already features 8,885 housing units, nearly 10 million sq ft of offices, 445,000 sq ft of retail space, 852,000 sq ft of hotels, and nearly 700,000 sq ft in educational and cultural buildings.

The overarching vision of Battery Park City’s blending of uses to create a community has been repeated many times over, though modern versions also tie in other priorities, such as sustainable development and transit-oriented approaches.

For instance, the Steel Point development in Bridgeport is aiming for an ultra-sustainable environment that will have most of its structures qualify for the highest LEED rating of platinum. It will also generate 5 to 7 MW of power from solar, wind, and hydroelectric resources toward its projected annual 45 to 60 MW of consumption at build out in 2013 or 2014.

In other areas, the main focus is on developing new communities around a transit core, such as the plan for the 350-acre Princeton Junction plan that has been in the works in West Windsor.

Concerned that a perception of cronyism and backroom deals feeds skepticism and opposition to large-scale planning projects, Hsueh, the West Windsor mayor,  says he first instituted a municipal policy prohibiting companies that wanted to do business with the township from contributing to political campaigns. Then, an extensive public input period culminated in December with the selection of Hillier Architects to design the master plan.

Hsueh says there is no preconceived idea of what the final product coming out of the public process will entail. But he says he is applying a checklist of guidelines for the redevelopment plans, including “credibility,” sustainability, capacity-based planning, and fulfilling municipal obligations.

Hillier’s Walters, who is working on the project, says the firm is taking a broad view.

“It’s our job to look at the whole project,” Walters says. “As long as we educate people about what they will get and what they will give up, we have to respect their ultimate decision.”

 Such public engagement is critical to large-scale private and public planning initiatives, which need buy-in from citizens to gain the political and financial support that interests developers and sees a project through to fruition, says Raffaela Patrasek, who is mixed-use development manager in the White Plains office of HDR, a planning firm based in Omaha, Neb.

“The whole point is to create a dialogue and keep that dialogue going,” she adds.

HDR is on a team planning a concept that will redevelop Manhattan’s James A. Farley Post Office Building and surrounding sites into a new train station and office-residential-retail hub encompassing nearly 2 million sq ft. It focuses on ensuring that master plans are financially feasible and conform to agreed-upon parameters, Patrasek says.

“Projects can take on a life of their own,” she adds. “We want to make sure that the project promised is the one delivered.”

As with any large development venture, master plans in the end work best when they have several core ingredients in place.

One that always helps is having strong political support. It was a primary driver of the West Windsor site, Hillier’s Walter says.

“The one single catalyst has been the mayor,” he says. “He consistently made this a priority. It had been part of the discourse for 20 or 30 years, but nothing happened.”

Other important factors include having a plan that ensures financial feasibility and removes as much risk as possible through upfront community buy-in, zoning changes and environmental due diligence.

“Making money isn’t necessarily bad,” Patrasek says. “We want to incentivize people to come in.”

Ultimately, the goal is to not just make pretty drawings, Walters says.

“If we make a plan that can't thrive, it doesn't do anyone any good,” he adds.

Tom Stabile contributed to this article.