Ahwahnee Awards honors West Coast projects

Top West Coast new urbanist projects and plans were recognized at the Smart Growth conference in San Diego, when the Local Government Commission’s Center for Livable Communities presented its annual Ahwahnee Awards. The awards for projects built in the last decade went to Orenco Station in Hillsboro, Oregon, and to Belmont Dairy in Portland, Oregon. The awards panel cited Orenco Station as an excellent example of good greenfield design and a true mixed-use community. Belmont Dairy, the conversion of an old plant into affordable apartments over a specialty grocery store, impressed the panel with its preservation and enhancement of the traditional architecture and with its mix of subsidized and market-rate housing. The panel recognized a vision plan for revitalizing downtown San Rafael, California, as the best government-adopted policy, along with Oregon’s Transpor-tation and Growth Management Program (TGM). The 1993 San Rafael plan has encouraged higher residential densities and first floor retail frontages, and improved the pedestrian environment. The TGM program has handed out more than $20 million in local grants for planning compact communities and has emphasized the link between transportation and land use planning. The downtown Brea redevelopment plan (see images) and Playa Vista in Los Angeles won in the category of government-adopted plans. The Brea plan impressed the panel by creating a main street on a secondary street that could provide a better pedestrian environment than the busier primary street. Playa Vista, under construction and scheduled to begin home sales in the spring, was honored as a model for urban infill development in an area known for low-density sprawl. In the category community/neighborhood programs, the Association of Bay Area Governments won an award for its video Hometown Blues. The video provides an overview of sprawl and traffic congestion and advocates infill and mixed use as a solution. It is intended to be shown on television or at community forums. Also awarded was the California State Trade and Commerce Agency’s Main Street program, which assists communities in using a main street approach to restoring commercial districts. According to the awards panel, this program has produced results for over 10 years by guiding, but not encumbering, local efforts. The Ahwahnee Award for regional planning went to the Solona Neighborhood Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico for its study A Model for Growth without Sprawl. The design firm Sakal and Hood collaborated on the study with 1,000 friends of New Mexico and the City of Santa Fe. The award recognizes the study for presenting an easily understandable, comprehensive solution for building self-contained neighborhoods that respect and preserve the local vernacular architecture. The Ahwahnee Awards are named for the Ahwahnee Principles developed in 1991 by a group of leading architects and urban designers. The Local Government Commission is based in Sacramento. Cosponsors of the awards are the California chapter of the American Planning Association and the California Council of the American Institute of Architects.