Depot Square A Cookie-Cutter Plan?

I have heard advocates of Bristol's urban renewal plan say they don't want a cookie-cutter downtown.  With Bristol's redevelopment parcel's name being Depot Square, I was an immediate skeptic of the notion that it's characteristics were locally inspired.  Transportation planning is a regional effort and New Urbanism projects are almost exclusively adapted from a centrally planned model.   This is why I was not surprised to find common results in my internet search.   Here's a look at five of the top location results.  Can you spot the common elements of the Google Search?

 Depot Square: Boulder, Colorado
This endeavor captured the most amount of responses using Google's browser.

Ads:

 "Welcome to Depot Square Apartments, affordable apartments Boulder, Colorado.  Our neighborhood sits close to everywhere you want to be. Walk to shopping. Walk to entertainment. Walk to public transportation. If you’d like to rent your new apartment home with a great location you’ll love the community we’ve created...."

"Boulder’s most unique affordable housing community, Depot Square!

Silva-Markham Partners is pleased to announce that it has been awarded management of Depot Square, which is part of a long-awaited transit oriented project; a Pedersen Development Co, Regional Transportation District and the city of Boulder collaboration, which provides for 71 permanently affordable, well-designed one and two bedroom apartment homes. An adjacent parking garage will provide a parking space on the same level as each apartment home. The uniquely planned community will also have bicycle parking, laundry facilities on every floor, large storage units, and controlled access. Depot Square residents will also enjoy a new city park and the Goose Creek Trailway just outside their doors!

In the news.:

"Roughly 20 would-be residents of the Depot Square apartments opening at Boulder Junction are scrambling for housing after city officials said they didn't meet Boulder's eligibility requirements to live in permanently affordable units.  The residents are all students who applied to live in one of 71 permanently affordable one- and two-bedroom apartment units built by developer Scott Pedersen in Boulder Junction. The city contributed $5.4 million in affordable housing funds from another Pedersen project, the Solana, 3100 Pearl St.

Of 48 apartments for which applications were submitted, the city rejected 14 of them as being rented to ineligible students. Roughly 20 people were going to live in those 14 apartments. The apartment units, which are in the process of leasing now, are intended as housing for people who work in Boulder but could not otherwise afford to live there."

(Click here for link)

"...the Depot Square development in central Boulder, which will include an underground Regional Transportation District bus rapid transit station. 
......DepotSquare is a $50 million to $55 million development that will include a 140-room Hyatt Place Hotel, a busrapid transit station, 71 permanently affordable apartments and a five-level parking structure built around the historic depot building.....
......Pedersen has been working on getting the project going for about three years. Other than the hotel, he said, he didn't yet have any tenants to announce. "Now that we've started construction and have a delivery date, our marketing effort can come back into focus," Pederson said. The project is part of a joint effort between the city of Boulder and the Regional Transportation District to create a transit area that incorporates a mix of uses, including a large affordable-housing component. Land to the west of Depot Square, where Pollard Motors sits now, will someday consist primarily of affordable housing. The Boulder Junction area has been eyed by the city for at least two decades, said Susan Osborne, former Boulder mayor, as she addressed the crowd at the groundbreaking, and the current plan is a far cry from consultants' early ideas that included a large surface-level parking lot with a simple bus turnaround. The new bus station will be a six-bay station located completely underground in the Depot Square development below the parking structure. "We're really proud of it," current Boulder Mayor Matt Appelbaum told the crowd. "It took a really strong and committed partnership to pull this off."

 Delray Beach, Florida

City commissioners gave initial approval to the $20 million Depot Square Apartments in advance of a final vote on the site plan scheduled on July 9. The Caribbean-themed Depot Square would include 284 apartments, with 71 units dedicated to affordable workforce housing. The complex is designed with a mix of one, two and three-bedroom apartments.................................. City officials hope the project provides much-needed housing inventory near where residents work. The project site is minutes away from Delray’s downtown ..."

 

Beverly, MA

RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITIES, Depot Square Condominiums  

Windover completed the design/build of this mixed-use, transit-oriented, multi-unit residential building. Located adjacent to the Beverly train station, the project included 46 condominiums, first floor retail and two levels of underground parking."

Depot Square. Englewood, NJ

St Johnsbury, VT

Depot Square Apartments

"located downtown close to public transportation. 0 & 1 bedroom apts., heat & hotwater included. rent based on 30% of income"

"... following 2 years of negotiations and groundwork, announced it will not purchase Depot Square Apartments at the corner of Railroad Street and Eastern Avenue. The building's owner - Herb Berezin of Holyoke, Massachusetts - rejected a $1.43 million offer from St. Johnsbury-based Kingdom Development Company and its partner, Lyndon-based RuralEdge.

Bangemann-Johnson said issues at Depot Square have included health hazards such as bed bugs and on-street problems such as fistfights. Every apartment unit is subsidized by the federal Housing Assistance Program, or HAP, which is administered locally by the Vermont State Housing Authority, he said."

One site called Begbugger.com reports:

"Depot Square, a heavily infested building where canine scent detection teams found bed bugs in 39 of 47 units.  WCAX.com reports,

"For the last four months, tenants living in the Depot Square building have been living side by side with bedbugs, even after repeated attempts to exterminate them.

“It seems like they can’t get rid of it then you have to throw away all of your stuff and start from scratch,” Stepp said.

A dog specially trained to sniff out bedbugs recently went through the Depot Square apartment complex and found that all but eight of the 47 units are infested."

The results for Depot Square, in Bristol, CT brought me to the Bristol Rising page featuring the  Depot Square Unified Downtown Development Project Special Permit Application.

Below is a glimpse into what has long appeared in Bristol's regional Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy documents.

Bristol and CEDS Projects

One excerpt from Bristol's West End Plan is to the right.

Do you think that the people in Bristol's community really have had a say in the creation of "affordable housing" on the former mall site?

Do you think that a grassroots effort is what brought about the idea of a so-called "walkable downtown" in downtown Bristol?
Do you think residents should have a say in how Bristol is to grow in the future?

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*Top locations are not in consecutive order of top five results.   The author makes no assertions nor claims as to whether readers find similar results when doing an internet search of their own using different search engines or methods and encourages readers to experiment with similar searches on his or her own.