2008 Northern Section award winners details
The 2008 American Planning Association, California Chapter, Northern Section award winners were honored at a celebration on Friday, May 16, at the Argonaut Hotel in San Francisco. Listed in the July 2008 Northern News, were the 17 award winners, along with a variety of photos. We wanted to tell the readers more about the projects, so they are described below by the four jurors including the attributes that formed the basis for the awards. The awards are listed in the order of presentation at the celebration.
Planning Achievement Award – Academic
Graduate Students, San Jose State University
(Urban Planning 260): San Jose Urban Eco Park
This award is bestowed to an individual – student or faculty - or to a collective group to recognize their outstanding work in the field of planning.
A large group of San Jose State University students and faculty worked collaboratively on a master plan to convert an abandoned 46,000 square foot warehouse on a 2.5 acre site into an innovative, environmental education and resource center. This real-world planning project focused on sustainable site design and building renovation to achieve the Platinum LEED certification. The students conducted numerous site visits, exhaustively researched all facets of the project, and hosted meetings with community members as well as with environmental resources planning experts.
The building layout was designed to be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of tenants, namely a County household hazardous waste drop-off program, a green business incubator program, a building materials reuse program, a green building demonstration facility, and classroom space for environmental education programs and events.
Distinguished Leadership Award – Student Planner
Emilia Mendoza, San Jose State University
The award is bestowed on a student who displayed outstanding leadership in serving the planning profession, fellow students, as well as the larger community of San Jose.
Ms. Mendoza took an active, participatory role on the 2007 CCAPA Conference Steering Committee for the event held in San José last fall, serving as an on-site advocate for students and student events. She served for several years as the student representative from San Jose State University for the Northern Section of the CCAPA Board of Directors, and continues an active role with the chapter. Ms. Mendoza selflessly served the larger community of San Jose through her leadership on the CommUniverCity neighborhood project, a partnership among City of San José, San José State University, and the Five Wounds Brookwood Terrance community in San José. She devoted countless hours to help those community members plus high school students better understand the planning process through classroom work spent instructing a team of 15 high school students in the formal planning process and encouraged them to pursue urban planning as a profession.
Ms. Mendoza recently presented experiences of her involvement with the high school students at a conference for teachers on service-learning. She is actively involved with student events at San Jose State University through her leadership roles with the Urban Planning Coalition. In addition, she maintained an exceptional academic record and graduated in 2008 as one of the top students from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at SJSU.
Distinguished Leadership Award – Organization
Joseph Bellomo Architects, Inc., University Circle Development, Palo Alto
This award is bestowed on a non-APA related organization whose efforts have contributed to elevating planning principles, thus creating greater awareness of the value of planning, and improving the quality of life in one or more communities.
Since 1988, Joseph Bellomo Architects have had a long-standing commitment in the planning, design, and development of the University Circle Development project in Palo Alto. For two decades, the firm worked closely with Palo Alto’s planning department, local businesses, transportation agencies, residents, and other community stakeholders in a collaborative effort to redevelop the area along the east side of the University Avenue Caltrain Station in Palo Alto into a vibrant gateway to downtown. Extending beyond a single parcel, this development exemplifies the new generation of projects, which are based on principles of sustainability and help create community within an existing urban framework. The leadership Joseph Bellomo Architects has taken in promoting good planning principles related to smart and sustainable growth through green buildings, compact mixed-used, transit-oriented design, and pedestrian-bicycle connections to integrate the new with the old, exemplifies the commitment to elevating planning principles and improving the quality of life in a community.
Distinguished Leadership Award – Professional Planner
Wayne Goldberg, AICP, Director of Advanced Planning and Policy Development, Santa Rosa
The award is bestowed upon an exemplary professional planner for their body of work in the planning field.
Although trained as an aeronautical engineer, Mr. Goldberg devoted 37 years to the planning profession where he used his thoughtful, inclusive, and supportive approach to planning to build strong, broad-based, community consensus. In addition to his work in local government planning and community development, he served as a lecturer at Sonoma State University, as a member of the California Planning Roundtable, the California Planning Foundation Board, and an unprecedented 14 years as Awards Chair for the Northern Section of the CCAPA. These activities illustrate his commitment and dedication to service, to the values of planning education, and to promoting the best attributes the profession has to offer. Mr. Goldberg places a high value on ethical behavior and its importance to the integrity of planning and the planning process. He embodies the highest ethical principles of the profession and regularly models them in his interactions and communication with hundreds of colleagues, students, decision-makers and the public.
Neighborhood Planning Award
CommUniverCity San Jose, San Jose State University
The award is bestowed for a neighborhood plan, program, design, or related effort that demonstrates innovative planning principles and measures that create sustainable neighborhoods that have lasting value.
The CommUniverCity San Jose project displayed impressive transferability to other municipalities through an integrated, collaborative model. The public participation method used by the planners was highly significant and successful due to a bilingual public process and bilingual community-based planning sessions. The roles played by the project planners were more as guides to resources than as project leaders, allowing the community to emerge as their own leader. The project proved that cooperation among a community, a city, and a university can lead to an excellent, appropriately designed project.
Education Project Award
Youth Planning Workshop Team, San Jose State University
The award is bestowed to an individual, project or program that uses information and education about the value of planning and how planning improves a community’s quality of life to create greater awareness among citizens or specific segments of the population.
The Youth Planning Workshop Team project from San Jose State University, previewed earlier in several awards, included recruiting and mentoring of 15 San Jose High Academy students. The graduate student Team from San Jose State University ‘CommUniverCity’ Program developed the Workshop curriculum. They introduced the largely ethnic and minority Academy students to the urban planning profession through a series of lectures, discussions, presentation, homework, and hands-on workshops. The Team trained the students on how to build a 3D model and how a visioning process really works. Projects that the Team and the Academy students successfully worked together and trained on together included the Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace Neighborhood project, a BART station, and a Rails to Trails project.
Grassroots Initiative Award
Solano Transportation Authority: Safe Routes to School Plan
The award is bestowed for successful planning in new or different settings and for projects that expand public understanding of the planning process.
The Solano Transportation Authority began development of its Safe Routes to School Program in 2005. The program encourages more students to walk and bike to school through a holistic approach that encompasses traffic calming and safety engineering, public education and safety training, contests and events to encourage biking and walking, plus local police enforcement of traffic rules and regulations. Particularly impressive was the cooperative effort managed by Alta Planning & Design consultants that went beyond a simple, top-down approach to a truly bottom-up process. The planning process incorporated a wide range of stakeholders in multi-disciplinary taskforces. In addition to taskforce meetings, public participation was encouraged to attend walking audits and other community events. Working closely with all the stakeholders in a collaborative and open process, the Authority and their consultant alleviated parent safety concerns and skepticism about these ‘new’ modes of transportation. Further fueled by a growing concern over childhood obesity and the social and environmental impacts associated with an auto-dominated culture, the project proponents embraced the wisdom of their Safe Routes to School and provided the planning world with an excellent example of a successful use of the planning process in a non-traditional setting.
Best Practices – Award of Merit
City of Oakland, Fehr and Peers Transportation Consultants: MacArthur BART Access Feasibility Study
The award is bestowed for outstanding planning work on a specific planning tool, practice, program, project or process that is a significant advancement to specific elements of planning, resulting in a useable and comprehensive document.
The MacArthur BART Access Feasibility Study by the City of Oakland and their consultants set project goals to include maintaining ridership on BART while at the same time reducing patron parking needs by including a parking structure with mixed-use and housing, and improving non-auto access to the BART station.
The consultant used an original ‘tipping point’ analysis to determine the ridership effects of replacing existing parking with housing. This is always a precarious action because no one really knows how to do transit-oriented development numbers (TOD) and everyone is continually learning from each other and each others’ projects. That said, the Study was clearly transferable to any transit agency for use and BART is currently using it as a model for other station area planning efforts. The document was very readable, of high quality and appropriately detailed, and as a bonus, carefully included possible funding sources.
Best Practices Award
City of San Pablo: 23rd Street Specific Plan
The award is bestowed for outstanding planning work on a specific planning tool, practice, program, project or process that is a significant advancement to specific elements of planning, resulting in a useable and comprehensive document.
The goals of this specific plan project included protecting San Pablo Creek and Wildcat Creeks, managing stormwater pollution prevention for the area, promoting green building practices, and utilizing infill development where possible. The 23rd Street corridor provides retail, commercial, light-industrial, and housing opportunities for a diverse, local community. The area cried out for a strong economic revitalization effort and components were created as part of the specific plan to include establishment of a Business Association and a Business Recruitment Group. The City recognized that the project would provide an arena in which to hear from a multi-lingual community, so they hosted many community workshops to encourage public involvement. The community was very involved in building design criteria and responded to the City’s simulations of various key sites and key community views to preserve these features. The neighborhoods were able to articulate the unique décor they desired for the Plan via building material call-outs and decorative design requirements.
Focused Issue Planning – Award of Merit
City of Santa Rosa: Downtown Area Specific Plan
The award is bestowed for a planning document of unusually high merit completed or published in the past three years, focused on a specific aspect of the planning process.
The City of Santa Rosa was intent on making the most of a proposed area rail transit station site and successfully rendered their downtown area specific plan. The City’s original, flexible land use plan encouraged economically-run mass transit amid many historic buildings and long-established neighborhoods. The project’s high level of public participation empowered City to encourage affordable housing, always a tenuous sell.
Focused Issue Planning Award
City of San Leandro, BMS Design Group: Downtown San Leandro TOD Strategy Plan
The award is bestowed for a planning document of unusually high merit completed or published in the past three years, focused on a specific aspect of the planning process.
The very ambitious Downtown San Leandro Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Strategy Plan established a guide for downtown San Leandro for next 20-30 years. The Plan included a land use framework, a comprehensive circulation system, design and development guidelines, and a series of implementation actions. Specificity of the Plan applies Smart Growth principles for a vibrant downtown, to bring in more housing development, more retail, more jobs, and to improve the pedestrian environment, thus adding energy area. Wisely, the City wanted to maximize public transportation use of their BART station.
The project’s original approach focused on retaining land uses that encouraged pedestrian activity and discouraged land uses that detracted, regardless of land use category on existing plan. The transportation analysis can easily be transferred for use on other, similar projects, the detailed land use assessment analysis can be used on any TOD project, and the public participation process was well-managed. The Plan is readable and well- illustrated with appropriately detail. An impressive high-level of collaboration between agencies, regional experts, the public, and multiple levels of City staff was clearly reported, and because of this participation, the project should be easily managed.
Innovation in Green Community Planning – Award of Merit
City of Alameda: Local Action Plan for Climate Protection
The award was bestowed for an innovative plan, program, tool, or related effort that demonstrates advancement in planners’ efforts to address the serious consequences of development and everyday living on the environment.
The City of Alameda created their own local action plan for an innovative approach to reducing carbon emissions at the municipal level. The Plan proposes a carbon emissions reduction of 25% below baseline conditions by 2020, a significant target for any entity to set. Local initiatives have already begun to reduce carbon footprints by businesses and government.
Innovation in Green Community Planning Award
City of Oakland, DC&E: Tapping the Potential of Urban Rooftops – Rooftops Resources Assessment
The award was bestowed for an innovative plan, program, tool, or related effort that demonstrates advancement in planners’ efforts to address the serious consequences of development and everyday living on the environment.
The study analyzed rooftop resource implementation and benefits for the built-environment Eastlake district in Oakland. In-depth analysis provided data on the suitability of rooftop resource strategies in different built contexts, highlighting retrofits to existing buildings without structural improvement; designed rooftop resource prototypes for existing buildings; analyzed productivity for edible garden designs; quantified the productivity benefits of rooftop gardens, renewable energy, and rainwater catchment technologies; and looked beyond the analysis of green roof benefits at the building scale to project outcomes at the neighborhood scale.
The highly intelligent study concluded that today, it’spossible for building owners to install rooftop technologies and improve water quality, save energy, grow fresh produce, generate clean electricity, and contribute to greater community resilience and livability. Extensive green roofs and rainwater harvesting do present some challenges that need more assessment, but the potential is there.
Planning Project Award
City of Union City: Implementation Efforts in Intermodal Station District
The award was bestowed for a specific planning project of unusually high merit that is in the process of being constructed or has been completed with the last year.
The City of Union City demonstrated outstanding planning work of originality, transferability and quality, involved meaningful public comment, utilized planning professionals appropriately that resulted in a comprehensive and useable document. Their goal was to implement their Intermodal Station District and Transit Facility Plan to create a new, high-density, mixed-use town center adjacent to existing BART, as are many of today’s City projects.
Union City began planning their project in the early 1990’s. They were faced with the usual set of challenges for transit oriented development projects, including hazardous material cleanup, and a district of single family suburban homes. The plan slowly emerged via an exhaustive effort, with mixed-use development carefully placed amid the existing homes, preserving distinct neighborhoods. To date, several hundred housing units have been built, along with critical infrastructure for the town center. The BART station is being upgraded into an Intermodal Transit Station with a bus facility and passenger rail soon to arrive. Due to an early public involvement process that formed the plan, coordination was maximized between the Station District Plan and public objectives of neighborhood preservation.
Planning Implementation, Large Jurisdiction Award
City of San Jose: County Island Annexation Plan
The award was bestowed for an effort that demonstrates a significant achievement for a jurisdiction with a Census 2000 population of 100,000 or more in accomplishing positive change as a result of planning - for long-term, measurable results to demonstrate that sustained implementation makes a difference.
The San Jose County Island Annexation Programis a multi-year plan that enables San José to annex a checkerboard of over 50 county ‘islands’ totaling over 1,800 acres (almost 3 square miles), making it one of the largest programs of its kind in California. Like so many counties in California, Santa Clara County’s jurisdictional legacy is a checkerboard of city, unincorporated county areas, jagged city boundaries created by the “annexation wars” of the 1950’s, and intransigent, fearful unincorporated pockets of land. Today, San José is using the streamlined annexation law that waives the protest provision for islands of 150 acres or less, to straighten out a big part of the checkerboard.
The City’s approach to the project, its public outreach and information dissemination, the comprehensiveness of the plan, and its basic simplicity effected a clean up of boundaries and ensured a smooth transition for residents with the City service providers as the area changed into City jurisdiction. For example, once annexed, residents will be able to call San Jose Police instead of the California Highway Patrol for speed enforcement on their street. More importantly, the County can now focus on their essential missions of health care and corrections, instead of responding to requests for repaving local streets or responding to code enforcement complaints.
Comprehensive Planning, Small Jurisdiction Award
City of Redwood City: Downtown Precise Plan
The award was bestowed for a comprehensive plan of unusually high merit completed within the past three years for, by, or within a jurisdiction with a Census 2000 population of less than 100,000.
The Redwood City Downtown Precise Plan is a detailed guide to everything you wanted to know about developing in Downtown Redwood City, but were afraid to ask. It is richly illustrated and design detailed so that now, when you want information about how to develop you can actually find it, and more importantly understand it.
The precise plan provided a clear vision for the rebirth of downtown Redwood City, an excellent how-to manual for all developers. The vision is built on ten simple principles emphasizing connections to and from the “core within the core” and “Depot Circle” located around the downtown train station. The clear vision is substantiated with clear graphics and illustrations that provide invaluable assistance to novice business and property owners as well as experienced developers.
Comprehensive Planning, Large Jurisdiction Award
County of Marin: Marin Countywide Plan
The award was bestowed for a comprehensive plan of unusually high merit completed within the past three years for, by, or within a jurisdiction with a Census 2000 population of 100,000 or more.
The 2007 Marin Countywide Plan, an excellent example of a well prepared comprehensive plan, integrates green community planning policies and programs throughout their comprehensive plan and concurrently implements a wide spectrum of sustainability programs focusing on habitat restoration, fish-friendly practices, community food systems, public health, healthy food and lifestyles, climate change, energy diversity, vehicle trip reduction measures, and green building and green business practices. This ambitious planning document and process resulted in programmatic and regulatory changes that have helped to make green practices – “business as usual” in Marin. Importantly, this may be the first local general plan in the nation to calculate its ecological footprint and address climate change. It does all of this in a highly readable and richly annotated comprehensive plan that promises a more sustainable future and people might actually read.
EW
2008 Jurors
Jennifer Andersen
Hilary Nixon
Steve Piasecki
Michele Rodriguez
2008 Juror Facilitator
Jeri Ram
