G Street Reimagined
November 11, 2023
By Architect Marcus Marino of Design M Group
On October 4th, the engineering firm hired by City planning staff presented their options for G Street to the community for comments. The Davis Enterprise newspaper wrote an article on this but neglected to mention the alternative plan prepared and presented by the Davis architectural firm, Design M Group. The firm’s architect, Marcus Marino, explained the major differences between his proposal and the City planning staff’s proposals.
The City of Davis has reduced G Street to a 20-foot wide pedestrian/emergency vehicle area in the center of the street. City Planning’s proposal is to keep the sidewalks for pedestrians as well. Design M Group proposes a different plan: pedestrians use the center width of the street while using the existing sidewalks and sides of the street for restaurant seating, store display areas, or parklets with kiosks. This plan could enliven the pedestrian area, allowing a more cohesive atmosphere for the extension of the restaurants and potentially increasing revenue for the City of Davis.
Design M Group proposes making G Street level from the pedestrian area to the sidewalks by milling the street and using an outdoor, raised flooring system. This raised flooring would permit stormwater to continue to flow in the same way that it does now, potentially reducing costs to the City. Design M Group’s proposal also aims to have a simpler and more cost-efficient way to correct the parking area near 2nd Street.
The most dramatic part of the proposal was the suggestion to build gateway signs over the entrances to the G Street area as an homage to the original Davis Arch that stood from 1916 to 1924. The gateway columns would be conical, like those of the original Davis Arch, and they would be built with perforated stainless-steel material that would be lit from the inside—creating a starry night sky effect as people walked by the structure.
Downtown advocate Aaron Wedra has closely followed both the City's and Design M Group's plans and expressed his view by stating, "I believe Design M Group's recommendations offer more substantial improvements to the pedestrian area of G Street than what the City has considered up to this point. The City has repeatedly emphasized adding strand lighting and street art (and other small improvements), but so much more could be done. This space is our city’s historic main street and, considering its proximity to the train station, could serve as the gateway to downtown. Putting a gateway arch on at least the South entrance would bring a lot of life to this pedestrian space. Additionally, Design M Group’s plans make much better use of the entire width of the street. The City’s current plans seem to partition the street into at least five segments unnecessarily."
Design M Group’s architectural renderings can be seen at https://smartzgraphics.wixsite.com/design-m.
If the street was raised to sidewalk level how would it be accessible to vehicles if needed, such as emergency? Would it ramp down to street level at the ends, or...?
Posted by: Donna Lemongello | November 11, 2023 at 03:49 PM
I like this proposal much better than the alternatives the city recently posted with a survey monkey on Nextdoor. It just seems like it is more intuitive and business and user friendly than the city’s alternatives.
I see the city rejecting this alternative due to emergency vehicle access unless the raised decking can support a fire truck and a fire truck can pass under the arches. So why not propose raising the existing street/future pedestrian plaza to sidewalk level (with ramps) as a paved area with drainage improvements as needed? Also, be ready to raise the height of the arches so a fire truck can fit under it.
Posted by: Jay | November 11, 2023 at 05:29 PM
Still not crazy about closing off a thoroughfare to traffic, but I like the idea of "arches" as an homage to the original.
Posted by: Ron O | November 11, 2023 at 06:44 PM
Here's the billboard I had installed on I-80 when I was selected to be on the Bicycling, Transportation and Street Safety Commission at the end of 2017: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QMLxYhgXHyRV3zUQ8
Absolutely agree to move the seating areas towards the facades of restaurants and similar; an additional element would have these area contiguous with the insides, with street-to-ceiling doors open when the weather is appropriate.
As suggested by a commenter, raise the entire street to the level of the business entrances with appropriate drainage. This will be the biggest spend and it's worth it.
Paint is nonsense. See this book about street and other public moziac treatments: http://www.marioloureiro.net/ciencia/minerais/i009812.pdf That's Portuguese; not quite as fancy but I lived in Prague for years and can't image all the various ADA-friendly cobblestones being replaced with paint.
There is no "plaza" here: It's 2/3 of a local street. Add that 1/3 to the totally batsh*t stupid out-of-scale parking lot + the adjacent street and we still have most of these taxpayer-supported Commons dominated by temporary storage of private motor vehicles.
So the archway is attractive but also out way out of scale. And from the 2nd St end announces: Two stupid parking lots, children! Don't waste money on this, at least not at this location. After money is spent on other things, perhaps consider one on the south side of 1st St., pointed south AND another just west of the train tracks coming from Davis Depot. BUT really, a good pedestrian area - or future one, sort of not really, on 2nd St - does not need an announcement like this.
The "open seating... " area is next to the current location of the public toilet, sandwiched between the street and the stupid parking lot. It does not seem right, aesthetically, at least at night.
Curious, do all the businesses load from the alley to the west or on 2nd St? They need something that by design - not enforcement - does not block people using bikes. The same design should all food delivery pickups with no interference for people walking bikes or walking.
The whole fixed central zone designed for extremely rare emergencies should not be painted, and... furthermore: Place seating areas on floating - you heard that right - floating platforms which are ADA-accessible and can move automatically if there's an emergency. For a few of the businesses these would be staggered, not the whole street would have these. There is absolutely no reason for moving-bicycle access through here. Walking only, with ADA exceptions.
There's also a significant need for bicycle parking at both ends; making clear how much of a waste is the vehicle parking on the south end.
When I drive on G St south of 4th and north of 3rd heading south at at night heading south I always - illegally - leave on only my parking lights until I complete the turn onto EB or WB 3rd. Otherwise my vehicle's headlights scour the faces of the people in the carfree zone. That's with my old school headlights: New LED's boil eyeballs and scar brains. The effect of the especially bright lights is a visual assault on pedestrians in all of Downtown and needs to be blocked with some kind of attachment to the automatically-retracting bollards used all over the Universe for years. Alternatively: 3rd St should be one-way north, at least at night, between 3rd and 4th.
In conclusion: It's irresponsible to spend so much money on a space still dominated by motor vehicles, including access for emergency vehicles. The street should be fully pedestrianized inclusive of the existing parking lot, or at very least access to the latter should be only from H St. There's literally nothing remarkable planned here in the scope of international pedestrian-free zones.... we can do much better, indeed.
Posted by: Tuvia ben Olam DBA Todd Edelman | November 11, 2023 at 09:06 PM
The center portion of the street dictated by the City Council for emergency vehicles would not be touched in the plan. If the City decides to repave it it can. That way there is no danger to on the emergency vehicles traversing the path in an emergency. Since there are individual building on each side of the street it is required to have a path for emergency vehicles to each building, therefore an emergency vehicle path must remain.
The entrance signs announcing G Street Plaza have a clearance of 15th as required by CalTrans.
Only the portions of the existing street from the "center emergency vehicle" path to the curb would receive the raised flooring system. So no vehicles need be on it.
Posted by: Marcus Marino | November 12, 2023 at 08:55 AM
While at first-glance, this generally seems to be a more interesting vision than the City’s proposal, I’d like to see some renderings of the heart of the design, rather than the only rendering now that primarily shows a giant entrance gate that seems out-of-scale and unnecessary as others have mentioned.
The treatment of the area labeled “open seating - street performers” and how it would transition to the parking lot behind it seems most problematic.
From a broader downtown planning/design perspective, I’m wondering what the City is doing here. We’re going to have two half-baked semi-“plazas” at G Street and E Street?
Posted by: R Keller | November 12, 2023 at 10:24 AM
The problem is the wrong question is being asked: what do we want the G Street Plaza to look like? The question should be: what do we want downtown to look like? You may say, "but we have the Downtown Plan". Let me ask you, is G Street being vehicle free in the Downtown Plan? No. G Street was an accident of Covid-19. Climate-activist bicycle advocates praise the banning of cars, but fail to realize this is just causing the cars to go elsewhere, while this doesn't help bicycles. The already-unsafe H Street alley is now overrun with cars/bikes/peds in a very dysfunctional space. This is a direct result of G Street, because no one considered traffic flows or parking or bicycle patterns or anything, just a block closed to cars and subsidization of Woodstocks and Wuderbar. I reject the entire premise. Open G Street, then come up with a vision for downtown that we can build towards that takes into account all forms of transportation and how they will circulate and interact.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | November 12, 2023 at 11:45 AM
Open G Street, then come up with a vision for downtown that we can build towards that takes into account all forms of transportation and how they will circulate and interact.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | November 12, 2023 at 11:55 AM
First of all, I wish that the Design M Group eople would respond...
Alan C. Miller wrote:
The problem is the wrong question is being asked: what do we want the G Street Plaza to look like? The question should be: what do we want downtown to look like? You may say, "but we have the Downtown Plan". Let me ask you, is G Street being vehicle free in the Downtown Plan? No. G Street was an accident of Covid-19.
> I would go half-way here and suggest that "accident" is in fact a realization of how important are spaces like this, i.e. the desire that resulted in the Downtown Plan has evolved! You can get all legalistic here, sure….
Climate-activist bicycle advocates praise the banning of cars, but fail to realize this is just causing the cars to go elsewhere, while this doesn't help bicycles. The already-unsafe H Street alley is now overrun with cars/bikes/peds in a very dysfunctional space. This is a direct result of G Street, because no one considered traffic flows or parking or bicycle patterns or anything, just a block closed to cars and subsidization of Woodstocks and Wunderbar.
> Then in the short-term do some things to make the Alley safer. I am not sure who are the "climate activist bicycle advocates” I wish we had more of them (reference pederast Gandhi comment about Western Civilization being a good idea LOL) And YES there should be more transit implemented immediately - that's a big mistake.
I reject the entire premise. Open G Street,
> "Open" is a matter of perspective. In my opinion, when a mode of transportation which threatens others with physical and other harm (noise, emissions). dominates, it's the opposite of "Open". That motor vehicles can facilitate visits that involve walking is also not necessarily not the opposite of "Open".
then come up with a vision for downtown that we can build towards that takes into account all forms of transportation and how they will circulate and interact.
> At best motor vehicles don't `interact' with people cycling, walking, using wheelchairs in any kind of organic way which you seem to imply. It's not a conversation, it's not remoras on a shark, etc. The current state is that motor vehicles utterly dominate Downtown while moving or when temporarily stored for free in public space.
AND then sadly we have precisely zero transportation staff in town who are qualified to "vision" what you suggest, and therefore almost no more ability to select and direct private consultants who can do it.
G St is FAR from imperfect, yet it's some kind of organic reshuffle of the Commons. Some eggs get broken. It seems that you want to throw the baby out... to delay things for YEARS until we have another flawed and timid process that fantasizes the ability for heavy vehicles operating at the whim of their operator to be safe around little bags of bones..... it might be more p-word progressive due to COVID-inspiration, but there's a risk it goes backwards as forces that consider cars an example of open use every means at their disposal to War is Peace the hell out of anything interesting.
So how 'bout we consider a completely carfree Downtown as the natural state, and only then agree what can be added safely?
Posted by: Tuvia ben Olam DBA Todd Edelman | November 12, 2023 at 09:07 PM
TE say: "So how 'bout we consider a completely carfree Downtown as the natural state"
What the heck, how about a car free world as long as we're at it? All it would take is a virus with a 100% fatality rate.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | November 13, 2023 at 07:51 AM
Shutting down a single street in Davis will not make any difference regarding overall traffic, and will simply shift it to surrounding streets (as Alan M noted). Probably creating more congestion and resulting greenhouse gasses, as well as danger on those streets.
On an indirectly-related note, Toyota's chairman has noted that all-electric vehicle sales are slowing. He states that "people are finally seeing reality", in regard to the challenges preventing widespread adoption.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/toyota-chairman-who-was-hesitant-to-embrace-evs-says-people-are-finally-seeing-reality/ar-AA1jNTLn
(Take a look around the region, if you want to see what folks are actually driving.)
Todd's type of approach is the only one that will make a difference (e.g., shut down every single street in California, charge $50/gallon for gas, $10,000 for registration, etc.). In other words, the "beat them with a stick" approach. :-)
Or you can do what another commenter does (maintain ownership of a second car to prevent others from driving it).
Posted by: Ron O | November 13, 2023 at 08:26 AM
Reimagine G street, and all the downtown streets: a good power wash. Then empty the overflowing waste cans, and remove the leaves from the curbs, sidewalks, and then let’s talk about reimagine all of downtown. There’s a very nice plaza on C street and E street. If G street gets an arch, what about E and C; heck what about A, B, D, and F street arches? I can only imagine.
Posted by: Toni | November 13, 2023 at 12:50 PM
How about updating and following a citizen driven General Plan???
I can only imagine.
Posted by: Robert Milbrodt | November 13, 2023 at 03:54 PM
Posted by Mark Ellsberry
Reading the above comments, I feel most are posted for shock value or humor. We really need some serious conversation about all these issues, which should be encouraged by the city council but is not.
When getting rid of cars how will handicapped people get around? A long time ago when driving through St. Louis I found all traffic lights replaced by 4way stops and all streets were one way. Traffic actually moved well. A similar concept might help traffic flow in Downtown. This is for downtown only, keeping all streets open. As for the open air seating, why does the city need to pay for the businesses seating plans. Some sensible zoning laws would allow for sidewalk seating and a narrower walkway.
I don’t suggest that this is a comprehensive plan just a possible direction.
Posted by: Mark Ellsberry | November 13, 2023 at 04:40 PM
ME say: "Reading the above comments, I feel most are posted for shock value or humor. "
If only that were true.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | November 13, 2023 at 06:04 PM
All the strawman silliness above... woah.
Anyway, city planners working in the safest and most equitable municipalities across the known Universe who read my suggestions above would find them utterly unremarkable as in many cases they've been implemented in some form in these places for years, if not decades.
The "carfree as natural state" thing would be a conceptual process involving an engaged community, NOT the immediate banishment and/or theft and recycling of private property used for personal transportation.
Posted by: Tuvia ben Olam DBA Todd Edelman | November 13, 2023 at 07:16 PM