West LA VA
Location
Los Angeles, CA
timeline
2019—Ongoing
Role
Consultant
Services
More Info
The West Los Angeles Veterans Community Plan provides the framework for creating a cohesive Veteran-serving neighborhood on the West LA-VA campus for over 2,000 residents.
The neighborhood will include nearly 1,700 permanent supportive homes carefully knitted into the nationally-designated West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Historic Landmark District, utilizing both existing structures and new construction. Along with new affordable housing development, the community plan proposes a tapestry of community amenities, outdoor spaces, and partners that collectively provide a therapeutic healing environment for Veterans currently struggling with or are at-risk for being homeless. The Community Plan creates a series of intimate villages that cluster around activity nodes including a Town Center and Wellness Center. New buildings, open spaces, and circulation elements stitch together the historic fabric into a cohesive community while retaining the distinct historic character. The circulation network will be enhanced with a layer of complete street enhancements including accessible walkways, comfortable bicycle facilities, harmonious street trees and landscape, and local transit service. The palatial landscape of the West LA-VA campus will be retained and augmented by crafting deliberate, well-formed, programmed outdoor spaces. The draft Community Plan update is being circulated publicly while the first phases of development are under construction. For more information about the West Los Angeles Veterans Community Plan visit www.wlavc.org
Urban + Systems
The vision for the West Los Angeles Veteran community leverages the culturally significant historic landmark district to create a vibrant Veteran-serving neighborhood that also becomes the regional anchor for the broader Veteran community. This neighborhood will build upon the foundation of the historic structures and landscape, infilling with new buildings and open spaces to create a cohesive urban fabric. City Fabrick collaborated with KFA to develop the overall parti of activity nodes connected by formal axial relationships, prominent pathways, and enhanced outdoor spaces. The organizational framework stitches together the unique historic fabrics into the unified tapestry within the Town Center where the North VIllage’s fan-road and South Village’s triangle roadway networks frame the Town Green and Town Square. New buildings replace wandering surface parking lots to provide greater sense of organization and wayfinding for residents, staff, and visitors alike. City Fabrick worked with OCB to develop the landscape vision of enhancing both the formal and wild landscapes, extending them into a singular ecosystem that connects residents and habitat.
Planning + Policy
Establishment of this new supportive residential community within the one hundred and fifty year old historic landmark district is being guided by the West Los Angeles Community Plan. City Fabrick led the development of this comprehensive plan that includes housing, landscape and open space, infrastructure, and transportation. The plan includes extensive analysis of the existing conditions and history of the campus, as well as consideration of case studies, precedents, and best practices relevant for this massive undertaking. The Community Plan maps out multiple phases for developing the housing, considering funding, available land for development and buildings for adaptive reuse, along with the associated infrastructure necessary for supporting these new residential communities. The mobility and open space chapters consider enhancing existing systems while enhancing networks to more holistically serve the community. Development and design standards provide guidance to how to establish a harmonious relationship between the existing conditions to be improved and the new construction to be layered on within the neighborhood. City Fabrick continues to update the Community Plan based on shifting funding sources, partnerships, and available buildings and land for development.
Building + Interior
Landscape Architecture
City Fabrick is supporting implementation of the West Los Angeles Veterans Community Plan, leading the design of the first backbone transportation project: the Veterans Connector. The mobility project includes complete street enhancements to the majority of the fan-road network within the North Village area, including the addition of curbside parking that redistributes the capacity of two large surface lots that now host new residential development. The streetscape project also includes wider sidewalks and new parkways with landscape and uniform street trees that connect the two primary tree canopies into a unified urban forest. The Veterans Connector installs the first miles of dedicated bikeways on the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus, with newly constructed off-street bike paths and repurposing a service road into bike and pedestrian paths. The project also includes development of the prototype mobility hub for the neighborhood, with secure bicycle parking for four adjacent residential buildings, space for Veterans to service their bikes, and shaded seating for riders waiting for the shuttle bus to be established for the community. The Veterans Connector project is to be built in 2024.
Graphic
City Fabrick developed a unique brand for the initiative that has been applied to both the community planning process as well as for the Veterans Collective, the backbone nonprofit organization that coordinates services, partners, and community development. The brand evokes the gravity of the bold goal to provide supportive homes for half of Los Angeles County’s unhoused Veterans while providing an approachable welcome for residents of the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus. City Fabrick developed the Veterans Collective website, the central hub for sharing the vision for the West Los Angeles Veterans Community, to demonstrate progress developing the new neighborhood, and for recruiting partners and supporters for the effort. The brand has been applied to other material and formats when communicating internally and externally, including fundraising campaigns, social media, resident outreach, and promotional videos.
Engagement
Community engagement builds on extensive conversations taking place through the campus-wide master planning narrowing geographically on the historic landmark district and programmatically on developing the supportive neighborhood for Veterans. Engagement spans crafting the Community Plan, developing the new residential buildings and associated infrastructure, and establishing the therapeutic programming for residents. City Fabrick supported the backbone organization engaging partners, Veterans, Veteran-residents, elected officials, general public, and the multitude of agencies who have a stake and resources to support establishing the West Los Angeles Veterans community. This included facilitating meetings and interviews, engaging at VA campus events, communicating online and through social media, and canvassing residents, patients, and staff on campus.
