The Aycock Traditional Neighborhood District Plan establishes a master plan and Traditional Neighborhood District code for Greensboro’s historic Aycock neighborhood. At its heart is a proposal to renovate World War Memorial Stadium to current professional baseball industry standards. It provides a practical roadmap for upgrading the ballpark – perhaps best known for its appearances in the hit movie Bull Durham – to meet the programmatic concerns of minor league professional baseball, from parking to concessions to luxury boxes.
Preservation Greensboro and the Aycock Neighborhood Association engaged a design team led by Thursday Associates to prepare the plan. Siegman and Associates handled the transportation planning effort. The work including designing streets, crafting bicycle and pedestrian improvements, conducting parking counts, and recommending parking standards.
To engage the neighborhood and the community at large, the team developed the plan in a seven-day public design charrette, held on-site. Through meetings, small-group interviews, and walking audits, the team worked with residents, business owners, City staff, and others to develop a plan with broad support. The plan’s graphically-rich code ensures that new buildings will contribute to, instead of undermining, the neighborhood’s traditional pattern of pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use development. Its shared parking strategy provides parking for 2,500 vehicles within a 10-minute walk of the ballpark, while minimizing the need for new pavement.
To reconnect the neighborhood to downtown, the plan proposes a creative design for demolishing an unnecessary and pedestrian-hostile half-cloverleaf intersection. The move reintegrates a 12.5-acre parcel of city land back into the neighborhood, putting it back into productive economic use.
To address problems of speeding and crashes, the plan identifies a series of improvements, from low-cost interventions with temporary materials, to full rebuilds, to tame and reclaim major streets. Modern roundabouts, tree-lined medians, crosswalk improvements, and other safety measures will slow and calm traffic.
Images courtesy of Thursday Associates