Riversouth Tower

The site was 90 percent occupied by a parking lot, a small, one-story restaurant, and planned to be a 200-foot office tower with more than 300,000 square feet of space. WGI aided in designing three frontages to the City’s Great Streets standards, reviewed pedestrian circulation in surrounding areas, and helped incorporate off-street bicycle paths into the site plan. WGI also reviewed driveway locations and operations to ensure appropriate access into and out of the surrounding streets’ garages. 

With respect to mitigations, WGI and City staff understood the surrounding transportation network’s constraints and worked together to develop creative improvements. These included a reversible lane on South 1st Street to accommodate peak hour traffic via the removal of bicycle lanes to an off-street bridge to accommodate a transit-only lane on South 1st Street, which also provided an upgraded bicycle facility. These unorthodox improvement measures were considered more than the project impact but instead had a significant effect on moving people through the area. 

The project also was subject to a TDM plan, which WGI developed in concert with the developer. Through aggressive transit and bicycle strategies, such as reduced transit fares for employees and a bicycle valet for secure bicycle parking and maintenance, the project targeted a 40 percent reduction in single-occupancy vehicle trips to and from the parking garages.