Garden Grove Mixed Use Zones
Zoning Ordinance Amendment
Garden Grove, California
2010-2011

Garden Grove Boulevard has long been this namesake city’s automobile oriented Main Street. Like many strips developed in the 1950s, the automobile orientation now seems more blighting than vitalizing. In response, the City’s general plan was reformulated to encourage a mixed-use pedestrian-oriented environment. John Kaliski Architects, working with Hogle Ireland, Inc., was retained to develop form-based urban design logics and zoning standards that would implement the mixed-use concept in an evolutionary manner.

After interviews with key stakeholders, John Kaliski Architects developed a zoning-based approach that concentrated on enhancement and improvement of the “room” of the street through deployment of linear amenity zones, i.e. increased and active set backs to be realized as development occurs. These amenity zones are performative, mandating either tailored built-forms or, active and passive open spaces. In both cases, increased attention to enhancements at the back of sidewalks with intensified tree plantings, introduction of plazas and active storefronts, as well as mandated landscape standards at curbside parkways, leads to incremental improvement as development occurs of the street right-of-way. Complimentary built-form standards require street-facing facades, active storefronts, or surface parking courts and plazas along Garden Grove Boulevard, allowing urban design flexibility for both traditional and contemporary development types. Where the original town center intersects the boulevard, design standards become more prescriptive to conserve the historic character of the existing Main Street Historic district. The adopted zoning code balances the pragmatics of a suburban locale by accepting the patterns of use typically seen outside of city centers, while at the same time mandating built forms and environmental improvement that provide for pedestrian orientation and vitality.

Client: Hogle Ireland, Inc. for the City of Garden Grove
Scope: Form-based mixed-use zoning code
Cost: $55,000 for urban design component