WOODBRIDGE BUSINESS DISTRICT

Visioning & Placemaking in the Flats

Woodbridge, CT | Official Website

 

Project At a Glance

Client:
City of Woodbridge
Location:
Woodbridge, CT
Program:
Placemaking & Community Engagement

health biophiliaequity inclusivitycultural placemaking

 

Project Details

The commercial center for the Town of Woodbridge has developed from businesses co-locating as land use evolved away from traditional agricultural functions. As a result, the business district has no distinct character/sense of place. The Town wanted to create a vision for the business district that respected the agricultural roots of the Town while being a destination that would diversify the Town’s tax base, attract more businesses, and add mixed-use residential to the area. Pirie Associates developed a Vision and Placemaking Design Framework to assist the Town. The Pirie team worked with an appointed committee to design a place-based framework that could be used to guide updates to the zoning ordinance, encourage an incremental develop approach (rather than large scale, top-down projects), and incorporate design guidelines to create the vision identified in the effort. 

Pirie used its community engagement skills to envision Woodbridge district to maintain its rural character with our place-rich, community-rooted design process. Just north of Route 15 before Heroes Tunnel, the fertile land between the bluffs was farmed for generations before converting to more commercial uses. Working with community leaders, Pirie synthesized public feedback into a vision and placemaking framework with two main strategies for uniting the area: an activity loop and zones for densified mixed use. A complement to a SCROG Connectivity Study conducted by SLR, these strategies chart a course for cohesive incremental development in the area.