Reintroducing HEW

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 reintroduction. Not because the project is new, but because it is informed by both its history and the work underway today. Over time, the HEW site has seen multiple ideas and proposals—none to the satisfaction of the neighbors or owner. These efforts reflect a shared recognition that the HEW site really matters, while also underscoring a reality common to complex infill projects: not every proposal, even well-intended ones, results in a viable path forward.

Rather than revisiting or revising past plans, our current process steps back to better understand the site as it exists today—its constraints, its opportunities, and its responsibilities to the surrounding neighborhood and broader community. The process is maturing, it reflects a clearer understanding of what has come before, what is being learned now, and the questions that still require careful consideration.

This blog exists to support that clarity.

Why We’re Sharing This Process Publicly

Development can feel opaque, especially when projects unfold over long timelines and involve unfamiliar terminology or sequencing. This blog is one way we aim to reduce that opacity.

The intent here is simple:

• To explain how decisions are being informed

• To document what we’re learning along the way

• To share context before conclusions

This blog is not a marketing channel, nor is it a substitute for formal public review or approval processes. It is a place to slow things down, add clarity, and provide a shared reference point as the project evolves.

Transparency builds trust—especially when projects involve long timelines, and evolving information and costs.

A Site with History—and Real Constraints

The decision to begin again with a community-inspired design process was informed in part by this history. Previous proposals— whether formal or informally discussed—highlighted the challenge of balancing feasibility, neighborhood context, and long-term viability on this site. The current process is designed to understand, from the ground up, what a thoughtful and buildable project could look like today.

Infill development is inherently different from building on open land. When historic structures, existing infrastructure, long-established neighborhoods, and layered regulations are involved, complexity isn’t optional—it’s inherited.

The HEW site carries that complexity. Its buildings reflect an earlier era. Its location sits within an active neighborhood. Its infrastructure, access, and physical constraints shape what is possible long before design ideas ever come into play. These conditions don’t represent obstacles to overcome so much as realities to work with.

Responsible development in this context requires patience, experience, and a willingness to understand limits as clearly as opportunities. It also requires acknowledging a basic truth of infill projects everywhere: not every idea—no matter who it comes from—survives once the full set of site, safety, and regulatory realities are considered together.

That understanding is foundational to how we are approaching HEW.

Process Before Outcomes

From the outset, our approach to the HEW project has been process-driven. Rather than starting with a predetermined outcome, we’ve focused on building a framework that allows decisions to emerge thoughtfully and consistently.

That framework includes:

• Input from neighbors,community members, and local stakeholders

• Professional expertise across planning, design, engineering, and construction

• A set of shared values informed by that input

• Design guidelines that work in dialogue with existing frameworks to ensure standards and local context are met

This is not a linear or simplistic process. It is iterative by design. Ideas are examined, tested, refined, and sometimes set aside—not based on preference, but based on responsibility to the site, the surrounding neighborhood, and the greater community and the long-term viability of the project.

In this way, decisions are shaped less by any single perspective and more by how multiple considerations align—or fail to align—over time.

Where the Project Is Today

The HEW Renew project has concluded  Phase I, a period focused on understanding the community rather than deciding unit counts or detailed site plans.

As part of Phase II, we will host additional focus groups and input sessions that explore a range of development scenarios. It’s important to be clear about what these scenarios are—and what they are not.

These scenarios are not proposals. They are analytical tools. Their purpose is to help us understand what the site can reasonably support, given its physical constraints, historic context, regulatory environment, market realities and community benefit. Just as importantly, they help demonstrate which ideas do not work once those realities are fully considered.

Many of the concepts explored during this phase reflect options already circulating in the broader conversation. Examining them openly allows us to stress-test assumptions, clarify limitations, and carefully rule out paths that conflict with site constraints, safety requirements, long-term viability and the public’s desires.

Without this grounding, projects stall, remain vacant, or never move forward at all—outcomes that benefit no one.

This phase is intentionally exploratory. Nothing is being rushed, finalized, or advanced in isolation. The goal is understanding first—so that future decisions are grounded, defensible, and aligned with the broader needs of the community.

What Comes Next

In the coming months, we’ll use this space to unpack specific aspects of the HEW project in more detail, including:

• What we heard during Phase I community engagement

• How shared values began to take shape across diverse perspectives

• The financial realities of historic infill development

• How design responds to place, scale, and neighborhood context

Each post will focus on a single aspect of the process, allowing for depth without overwhelm–and creating a common reference point for future community conversations. Some will be explicative. Others are more reflective. All will be grounded in the same commitment to responsibility, clarity, and respect for place.

We recognize that projects like HEW exist within living communities, not abstract plans. Our hope is that by sharing this process openly, we can support a more informed, constructive conversation—one that acknowledges complexity, values care, and keeps the long view in mind.