¡Si Se Puede en Calle 23!
On March 31st, the 23rd Street neighborhood in Richmond came together at Richmond Union High School to reimagine the possibilities for the 23rd Street corridor, also known as Calle 23. Just a short walk from the Richmond BART and Amtrak Stations, Richmond Civic Center and the Richmond Greenway, Calle 23 is ripe with redevelopment opportunities.
Already home to a vibrant collection of mostly Latino-owned small businesses, the corridor has several vacant properties that provide opportunities for more small-scale, neighborhood-serving retail, as well as mixed-use and multi-family residential. CCLR’s Vision-to-Action (V2A) workshop brought together residents, business and property owners to provide their ideas for the scale and uses that they would like to see on currently vacant sites. Attendees used wooden blocks to experiment with different building heights and masses, and their models were run through a computer modeling program to test for economic feasibility. The results will be compiled and shared in a forthcoming report.
The V2A also collaborated with and leveraged other planning processes and resources. One example is the City’s drive to update its streetscape plan for 23rd Street to support pedestrians and bikes. Another is the City of Richmond’s two U.S. EPA brownfields grants, through which the City can provide technical assistance to property owners and developers interested in residential and mixed-use infill development. Having an up-to-date streetscape plan and strong community input to guide redevelopment is critical to a better future for 23rd Street.
The results of the Vision-to-Action will be presented on this blog and at future workshops — stay tuned!
CCLR, community partner Urban Transformations, and the City of Richmond were joined by their partners and consultants, Callander Associates and Fregonese Associates. The 23rd Street Vision-to-Action project is funded by a grant from the U.S. EPA, with additional generous support from the Mary A. Crocker Trust, First Republic Bank, the Beneficial State Bank Foundation, and the Clif Bar Family Foundation.
¡Hasta pronto!
