What’s Next for COVID-era Street Closures?

PlaceWorks worked with the City of Glendora to transform three temporary outdoor gathering spaces into permanent downtown destinations. Early in the pandemic, the City rapidly implemented outdoor gathering spaces to provide the community with safe places to eat and gather downtown. The popularity of these spaces prompted the City to make them permanent amenities for the community by closing the streets and adding furniture and shade. PlaceWorks supported the City in a community engagement process to design the spaces, developed landscape plans to bid the project, and supported the City through construction.

The plazas already have unique relationships with the businesses around them, and the plazas are themed to enhance these relationships. Meda Plazas cater to adjacent restaurants, providing outdoor seating, a lounge, games, and a play area. Playful colors and materials for shade and furnishing help create appealing gathering spaces within the plazas, including a street mural completed by local mural artists from Brilly Design Company. The Bus Plaza sees some existing landscape elements removed to create a more useable open audience space and make better use of an existing raised area as a stage for community events. Mobile seating options replace fixed benches to allow an element of user customization when visiting. New landscape was added to all the plazas using self-watering landscape planters and drought-tolerant planting.

In addition to Brilly Design Company, our key design partners included Vestre Furniture (street furniture), Dave Bang Associates (shade sails), and Los Angeles Christmas Light Installers (beach ball canopy). The project opened to the public on June 16th with a ribbon cutting and outdoor performance at Bus Plaza.