Recent projects

Cotton Street, Portland Maine

This is a small block development. Site conditions included a ½-acre parking lot and three historic buildings (Tracey Causer) at the northeast corner. Carved out of the parking on the Center Street side is a small lot containing a popular tavern, Brian Boru. The owner controls all but the tavern.

The design preserves all existing buildings, which are integrated to look like they are part of the design. The design objective is to return the parking lot be like the best preserved parts Portland. In addition, Portland has the distinction of attracting the largest percentage of young adults of any city in the country. Therefore, a prime objective is to appeal to young adults with "market affordable" housing, incubator office opportunities and small bustling retail. The design is scaled to people rather than cars, although there are 72 parking spaces on site, with room for expansion.

On the 1/2 acre parking lot we propose three new streets (Philadelphia style skinny streets), 82 units of mixed-income housing, 15,000 SF of retail and 30,000 SF of office space. Most of the housing is apartment flats, but there are several "trinity" town houses with rear gardens. Housing affordability comes from corridors that connect through what seem separate buildings. The connected corridors allow one elevator and two stairs to serve multiple buildings, lowering common costs. The facades articulate small scale on the street, reflect Portland character, and at four to five stories reflect the existing urban fabric.

The one exception is the office building on Spring Street. Spring Street is a divided boulevard, so the 13-story height of the office building is appropriate. The top two floors switch from office to residential, permitting spectacular views of the Portland harbor over the tops of the roofs below.

The site slopes 20' from Fore Street up to Spring Street, allowing parking to tuck a level, and if required, two underneath the project without the cost of deep excavations.

Some of the out-of-the-box thinking involved an existing statue honoring John Ford, the famous Hollywood movie director who grew up in Portland. Currently the memorial is opposite the southwest corner of the project, where it is obscured in a weedy corner. We propose a land swap with the city, allowing the memorial to relocate to the center of the intersection where it will receive notice and calm traffic. Here too it can become a small park. The increased value of this location will attract the Ford Estate to underwrite moving the monument and building the park, making a win-win scenario for the city and the Ford family. 

Cottrel Landing, Mystic Connecticut

When we began the design for this mixed use residential/commercial condominium project, we discovered a long extant letter on file at the town hall.  Referring to any development on this parcel of land, the letter stated simply, "We object!" and was signed by 75 citizens.

 Our design grew from our in-depth study of the Mystic vernacular and through community meetings where citizen concerns were dulynoted and made an integral part of the design process.  From that process, we established a concept which continued the town's pre-established street grid into the project.  Working with the architectural traditions of the neighborhood, we created a new  neighborhood which merges seamlessly with the old. Using this strategy allowed us not only to overcome the substantial neighborhood resistance, but in the end garner considerable enthusiasm for the project among the citizens of Mystic.

 Specific items enthusiastically supported by the citizens were keeping the waterfront open to the public and avoiding the key gate mentality normally associated with waterfront condominium projects.  All buildings are sensitive and reflective of the Greek Revival vernacular which is the predominant architecture of the area.  Extending the surrounding existing streets to the water opened up view corridors to the river for land locked houses behind the site.  We reused those existing buildings which had historic merit for commercial purposes, again to maintain public access.

 Each building, although comprised of multiple units, appears as a single Greek Revival house with details common to the existing houses in the neighborhood.  These units are joined by common green spaces, yet individual privacy is respected by screening these open areas with painted wood fences, gates, and other garden architecture.

  What began as a potential adversarial confrontation, ended with enthusiastic support and eager anticipation with newspaper headlines such as "One of the Best," and "Too Good to be True."

Senior Campus, Celebration Florida

This project is a 10 acre 250 unit senior living community located in the New Urbanism town of Celebration, now being developed by The Walt Disney® Company near Orlando, Florida.  For this large and highly visible project, a team of architects was assembled by a Minneapolis senior living developer client, John B. Goodman Company.  As one of eleven architects hand picked by Disney® from which developers may select for the project, ROA was chosen and acted as design consultants along with Centerbrook Architects to BWBR Architects of St. Paul, Minnesota.  Together with Goodman’s own in-house architects, a total of four architectural entities worked together and made up the Design Team for this project.

Through one on-site and two off-site design charrettes, and many hours of working closely together, through thorough and open communications the architectural team was able to design in total harmony. The Design Team’s goal was to integrate senior housing seamlessly into established rhythms of life at Celebration and, in the process, to invent an innovative approach to senior living.

 The principles of New Urbanism that form the underlying philosophy of Celebration were adopted and informed all planning. Edges of the site connect directly to those nearby. The north end is developed as a village of cottages that relates to nearby single family housing patterns and creates a small-scale foreground for the site’s larger buildings. Automobiles are limited to the edges, which are developed as active streetscapes enlivened by verandahs and porches that front, on the east, a 5,000-acre nature preserve, and on the west, an esplanade and canal archipelago.

 Celebration’s curvilinear streets are introduced; axes to significant Celebration features, such as the lake and its bridge folly, are locked visually into senior housing massing; and Arbor Circle is balanced by a staffed nature center with an observation tower leading to a wetlands nature walk. All available threads of Celebration have been identified, taken up, and knitted into those of the senior housing to make a continuous and elegant whole cloth.

 Celebration’s philosophy of community has been studied and underscores the project’s thinking. An extraordinary density of opportunities has been created for tenants to interact with each other. At the scheme’s center, residents are offered lush paseos, courtyards, and verandahs linked by venues for chance encounter, such as themed restaurants, cafes, grills, peacock alleys, porches, and gardens. Beyond that, residents are lured into creative lives outside of themselves. Provided are tiny sheds for painting and music, gazebos for bands, auto barns for car restorers, colonnades of studios and crafts boutiques, gardens, potting sheds, and marketplace pavilions.

 The fruits of these enjoyments will be offered not only to residents of the senior housing but also to the citizens of Celebration in crafts fairs, band concerts, garden markets, and auto shows, so that bonds of neighborliness will cross boundaries of neighborhood and age, and the promise of old— fashioned community established by Celebration’s guiding philosophy of New Urbanism will be realized in the most profound and far—reaching way possible.

 When the final project was unveiled, Disney® stated that it was the best presentation they had ever seen.