Gilroy Station Area Visioning Project
PlaceWorks led the community engagement process for a master plan of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority station area in downtown Gilroy.
Client
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority
Location
Gilroy, California
Services
- Community Participation
- Housing
- Transit Planning & Design
- Urban Design
- Corridor Planning
The goal of this project was to educate the community about an upcoming affordable housing development project and to identify project priorities and desired amenities by residents and stakeholders to inform future “requests for offers” for development of the site. PlaceWorks collaborated with local community activists hired by the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to organize and implement community engagement and visioning.
The station site is adjacent to a Spanish-speaking community of Gilroy, and this project engaged rigorously with both the English- and Spanish-speaking communities. PlaceWorks prepared conceptual site plans and organized two rounds of community meetings in both languages. The project resulted in high turnouts of not only English- and Spanish-speaking participants, but participants who spoke other languages and were from other ethnicities. The outcome was direct input from a rich cross-section of the Gilroy community. PlaceWorks documented feedback and findings in a final report to inform future development solicitations for the site.