Downtown Richmond is the old center of Richmond, California. The area is roughly bordered by 6th street to the west, 23rd Street to the east, Barrett Avenue to the north, and

Macdonald Avenue Macdonald Avenue is the main east-to-west artery in Richmond, California.department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

s and other chains such as J.C. Penney,

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

, S. H. Kress & Co., and

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

before

Hilltop Mall Hilltop Horizon, formerly known as Hilltop Mall, East Bay Science and Technology Center and The Shops At Hilltop, was a regional shopping center in the Hilltop neighborhood of Richmond, California. Hilltop is managed and co-owned by Prologis ...

was built in the 1970s.The area is currently undergoing a revitalization effort by the city, which has included the Richmond Shopping Center anchored by a supermarket. The Richmond Transit Village—coined Metro Walk by the developers, the Olson Company—has also been built, along with remodeling of the Richmond BART and Amtrak station and a bus transit center served by

AC Transit AC Transit (Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District) is an Oakland-based public transit agency serving the western portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. AC Transit also operates "Transbay" ro ...

and

Golden Gate Transit Golden Gate Transit (GGT) is a public transportation system serving the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in California, United States. It primarily serves Marin County, Sonoma County, and San Francisco, and also provides limited s ...

. A

Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente (; KP), commonly known simply as Kaiser, is an American integrated managed care consortium, based in Oakland, California, United States, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield. Kaiser ...

hospital and a

Social Security Administration The United States Social Security Administration (SSA) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability and survivor benefits. To qualify ...

processing center provide for a majority of the jobs in the area.

Metro Walk

Metro Walk is a

transit village A transit village is a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use district or neighborhood oriented around the station of a high-quality transit system, such as rail or B.R.T. Often a civic square of public space abuts the train station, functioning as the hu ...

in downtown Richmond.Transit VillageMetro Walk, City of Richmond website.
Accessed January 2012. a half-built sixteen-acre planned community. The first phase was built on an empty lot and parking lot on the west side of

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

BART Bart is a masculine given name, usually a diminutive of Bartholomew, sometimes of Barton, Bartolomeo, etc. Bart is a Dutch and Ashkenazi Jewish surname, and derives from the name ''Bartholomäus'', a German form of the biblical name ''Bartho ...

and

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

Capitol Corridor The ''Capitol Corridor'' is a passenger train route in Northern California operated by Amtrak between San Jose, in the Bay Area, and Auburn, in the Sacramento Valley. The route is named after the two points most trains operate between, San J ...

station.Providing Creative Housing Solutions to California Cities
, Olson Company, access date 27-12-2011 This has 132 homes on an eight-acre site with a housing density of 16.5 du/acre.

Layout and pricing

The floorplans of these cluster homes are from 1,395 to 1,615 square feet (130–150 m²).Homes feature BART at doorstep
Richard Paoli, ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...

'', 14-03-2004, access date 28-11-2011 When sales began in 2004 the homes sold from the $300,000 range and up. Three models were built in phase I: bungalows, villas, and career homes. The later come with a ground floor space that can easily be used as a business or live/work space and came with a business license from the city to do so. The monthly community fee was reported as $200 in 2004.

Public works project

It has

single-family houses A stand-alone house (also called a single-detached dwelling, detached residence or detached house) is a free-standing residential building. It is sometimes referred to as a single-family home, as opposed to a multi-family residential dwelli ...

as the primary housing units, instead of more traditional condominiums. It was built on the former parking lot and an adjacent vacant parcel of the

and

(

) station. It is a mixed-use project spearheaded by the Richmond Redevelopment Agency, in partnership with a large consortium of local, state, and federal agencies. Some of the most notable of these agencies include the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, BART, and the

Olson Company Olson may refer to: * Olson (surname), people with the name ''Olson'' * Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute * Olson (constructor), a former racing car constructor * Olson database, also known as ''zoneinfo database'' * "Olson", a song by Boards o ...

. The project consists of multi-level row houses, some of which come with a ground floor area with a free business license, in addition to commercial space, a planned parking garage, parks, and a greenway path connecting the station with the downtown area, in particular the

building and Kaiser Hospital. The plan also included the remodeling of the approach to the station which was seen as antagonizingly suspicious and met with apprehension due to the recessed entry which is being presently replaced with a more modern escalator-driven, well-lit entrance with a police substation to provide peace of mind to passers-by.

References

* *
Palo Alto City Council minutesBerkeley Daily PlanetBerkeley Daily PlanetBerkeley Daily Planet

External links

Map and overview from Metropolitan Transportation Commission

rom Richmond For Business {{Coord, 37.93767, N, 122.35525, W, region:US-CA, display=title Buildings and structures in Richmond, California Neighborhoods in Richmond, California Transportation in Contra Costa County, California

Metro Walk

Layout and pricing

Public works project

See also

References

External links