Bowers

The Bower’s Building, located at the corner of Yancey and Old Pineville Roads, was once the home of the Bower’s family fiber processing operations and continued for more than seven decades. It has since been redeveloped into a keynote mixed use project for the lower south end neighborhood. Urban Design Partners worked with the client, White Point Partners, to facilitate this vision and transformation. The existing zoning was not ideal for White Point Partners’ development plan, which kicked off the initial step of rezoning the site to MUDD-O from I-2. Due to the project location and type, there were specific elements the City requested be incorporated with the site design. Streetscape improvements along Yancey Road included on-street parking, space for a bike lane and dedicated amenity and pedestrian zones. The City agreed to a 12’ pedestrian and bicycle connection for future tie-in during redevelopment. Once the site was rezoned, coordination with tenant’s architect, client, City and County took the project through permitted construction documents. Like many adaptive reuse projects, the construction process presented opportunities for creative problem solving in collaboration with the contractor, architect, and municipalities. In this instance, a shared corridor needed to achieve private and semi-private outdoor space for each tenant and act as a public pedestrian plaza while clearly delineating areas for varying tenants. Urban Design Partners lead design efforts to provide for the plaza and corridors to achieve this cohesion, while providing for additional informal seating and pedestrian circulation.