How Place, History, and Scale Inform the Work Why Constraints Come Before Solutions On raw land, you typically design first and then apply constraints. On historic infill sites, the sequence reverses: constraints define the starting point. Understanding limits early prevents advancing ideas that can't survive reality—a pattern this site has already experienced. Constraints aren't obstacles to overcome—they're conditions to work within, and they often protect what matters most

How Shared Values Begin to Take Shape Community engagement produces a lot of data. Surveys yield responses. Focus groups generate transcripts. Public meetings create records of our voices. All of this matters—but none of it, on its own, tells you what to do next. The challenge in a process like this one is not gathering input. It's interpreting it responsibly: understanding what people are actually concerned about beneath the surface language, where priorities overlap even wh

Phase I Community Engagement—and What Began to Emerge From the outset, the HEW process has been approached with the understanding that responsible development—particularly on a historic infill site—requires listening before direction. Phase I of the community engagement process was designed around that principle. Rather than beginning with concepts or design solutions, Phase I was intentionally framed as Preliminary Discovery. The goal was to better understand community needs

A Project Shaped by Place, Process, and Responsibility Over the past year, the fate of the former County Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) site has been part of an ongoing public conversation. During that time, a great deal of work has been happening—sometimes visibly, often quietly—focused on listening, learning, and carefully working through what it means to responsibly develop a complex, historic infill site in the heart of our community. This article marks a moment of r