Takoma Walk

Location: Takoma Park, MD. Restored historic building in 1920s and 1930s neighborhood with historic district overlay

The project is a planned mixed-use retail, office, and residentail building that seeks to restore an historic 1941 structure to its original condition, while maintaining the intimate pedestrian scale of Old Town Takoma Park, Maryland's Carroll Avenue. Above this restored storefront an additional story of residential units with glass penthouses above form a single angled mass, pulled back from surrounding streets while offering views in all directions.

The project aims to improve street frontage along Westmoreland Avenue, a transitional street from an established single family neighborhood of bungalows to this important retail area. Planned residential units face directly onto this street and a city owned park, and are designed as a series of walk-up, live/work units to allow for possible use as small professional offices or low-traffic retail shops for homeowners.

Perhaps most challenging, the project drops over 35' from the main entry along Carroll Avenue to the lowest point of the site along Westmoreland Avenue. Such a condition demanded a sensitive response toward an existing neighborhood to the south while meeting the minimum density required by the owners. In an effort to mitigate the change of use and scale between Carroll Avenue and the residential neighborhood along lower Westmoreland Avenue and to deal with this dramatic grade change, the design includes 6 residential mews buildings at the interior "dog-leg" of the site. These bungalows will blend in scale with the neighborhood to the south, which includes many bungalows from the 1920's and 1930's. Similar in its conception to the Bungalow Courts of this period the mews is a series of flats and duplex units that front onto shared pedestrian green spaces.

Located less than 1/4 mile from existing Takoma Park Metro Stop and transit hub, this transit oriented development is located within a historic overlay, and replaces a number of dilapidated, non-contributing structures on a cherished town site. During the discovery phase of the project the architect and owner, with assistance and input from a broad range of community groups, researched the history of the city and the site. Every effort was made throughout the design process to respect the desire of local residents to investigate and include local architectural details into the project's design. Used inventively, such contextual elements add a degree of texture to the decidedly contemporary design and include:

deep eaves
absorbed and attached porches
balconies
roof brackets
vertical bays
adaptations to a basic unit type to provide visual interest

When completed the project will bring a critical mass of 70 new homeowners in a variety of unit options including walk-ups, duplexes and flats, as well as approximately 10,000 square feet of retail to this vibrant and historic neighborhood.

Transect Zone(s): T4 general.
Status: Proposed
Project or Plan's Scale: Building
Features: Affordable/subsidized housing, Civic buildings & parks, Green buildings, Live/work, Mixed uses, Transit oriented development.
Total built area (in sq. ft.):
Total project cost (in local currency):
Retail area (in sq. ft.): 9000
Office area (in sq. ft.):
Number of hotel units:
Number of residential units (include live/work): 70
Civic uses (type and size): community-serving retail
Parks & green space (in acres):
Project team designers: Cunningham | Quill Architects PLLC
Project team developers: ICG Takoma, LLC

Previous site status: Redevelopment