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CalPERS Headquarters
Expansion Master Plan
Workshop #2: Master Planning Features
November 29, 1999
On November 29, 1999 more than 40 people attended the
second of four community workshops sponsored by CalPERS to develop a master
plan for their headquarters expansion project. Held at the existing CalPERS
Lincoln Plaza building, the second workshop offered an opportunity for
participants to identify planning features master planning alternatives
should address.
The objectives for the November 29 workshop included:
1. Review of November 15 workshop results
2. Review CalPERS preliminary master plan program
3. Prepare planning concepts and identify consensus features
The workshop agenda included a planning process update report, a summary of urban design context issues and objectives identified by the community in the first workshop, and an opportunity for participants to work as planning team members.
Summary of Key Findings
Participants formed six planning teams. Each team worked with a site plan summary of urban design issues from the November 15 workshop and preliminary master planning program elements for the headquarters expansion. The teams identified access, organizational, and street edge features for the project.
Issues and Features:
Planning teams identified a variety of issues in their efforts to work with the development program and the urban design context for the project. Overall, four issues stood out as important variables for the planning options prepared by the teams.
1. 4th Street
All the teams deliberately addressed the future of 4th Street. Two of the teams left it in place to maintain the scale of traditional blocks south of R Street; and the others closed the street for use as open space or a location for facilities shared between the existing Lincoln Plaza and future expansion building.
2. Open space or community space organizational feature
Each team identified a strong open space or indoor space as an organizational feature for the project. These included open malls or galllerias that ran down the alleyways or 4th Street, or rooftop terraces that reflected the design of the existing Lincoln Plaza building.
3. Height verses open space
The teams made decisions regarding the trade off between height and loosening up the site to accommodate additional open space. Some teams created taller office or residential buildings to make room for open space or to scale down another portion of the development. The overall R Street height requirements were traded-off against open and green space benefits.
4. Approach to parking
All the teams acknowledged the capacity and visual challenge of parking 1,650 cars in the master plan. Each team explored ways to mitigate the presence of parking structures including pushing as much parking as possible below grade over the entire site (including 4th Street); surrounding parking structures with other office, retail or residential uses; or stacking it on the edge of the site. Several teams suggested increasing the use of public transit, downsizing the parking or providing an off-site location.
Street Edge Design:
Each team outlined their environmental design response to various street edges for the master plan. These comments included both land use and physical design ideas.
R Street
Design features for R Street emphasized its evolution as a lively and walkable street. Many of the teams used residential development, retail, and CalPERS shared facilities to activate the edge of the street. Physical design ideas included variation in scale and pattern and open spaces to make R Street a more interesting street.
Q Street
Q Street was viewed as a business street with office development and ground floor activities shared between the CalPERS buildings.
5th Street
As was suggested by participants in the first workshop, many teams explored introducing residential development and retail on 5th Street to enhance the linkage between residential areas to the south and the north of R Street.
6th and 7th Streets
6ht and 7th Streets were viewed as residential addresses by all of the planning teams.
3rd Street
The teams' ideas for 3rd Street's role varied but included office and parking. One team suggested vertical mixed use with a view of the river for residential development above office and parking.
Greatest Challenges:
A "pop quiz" at the end of the workshop prompted the teams to share what they felt the greatest challenges were in preparing concepts for the master plan site. All the teams stressed finding solutions for parking was the greatest challenge. This included both fitting the parking on the site and then mitigating its visual presence. In addition, one team said it was hard to fit all of the shared CalPERS program activities on the ground floor.
Planning Team Summaries
The six teams prepared conceptual ideas for the project
using a gaming kit consisting of a context map and program elements. Each
team was responsible for preparing master plan concepts by completing the
following two exercises.
Exercise #1: Access and Organizational Features
Using the program game pieces and the programming principles listed below, explore master plan concepts on the urban design diagram map. Establish a concept that:
