Business View Magazine | October 2019

293 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2019 DUBL IN, CAL I FORNI A coming to the end of the first year working with the council, as well as with our consultant, on identifying where the town square should be located and what a main street experience could look like with different land uses such as a hotel, office, housing, retail, and restaurants. We’ve taken the time to identify the location and shape of the park; the community came out - we had more than 245 people who responded to a survey and said this is the location and shape they would like. It’s a town square in the center of our downtown. And now, we’re working on what the main street experience would look like to support the park. We’re getting ready to go back out to the community and show them the type of development that could occur and get their feedback.” The Downtown Dublin Preferred Vision builds upon the city’s Downtown Dublin Specific Plan, which was adopted in 2011, creating three separate, but contiguous, downtown districts. The first district is a TOD, a Transit Oriented District, next to one of the City’s BART (transit) stations. • 360 Fitness superstore (retailer) • Urban Ka-Re House (restaurant) • Shapes Fitness for Women (fitness studio) Over the last year, Wetherford says that Dublin has focused on creating a new downtown town square and what she calls “a main street experience.” She explains, “One of the challenges we face is that we are a newer community; we’ve only been incorporated for 37 years. So, prior to the city being incorporated, we had a lot of county planning, and so our downtown is not your traditional main street. We have two large shopping centers in the downtown’s retail core that we are looking to transform. The Urban Land Institute came out and did a study of our downtown and said, ‘This is what we would recommend – a main street experience with a park, retail, shopping, office, hotel, and different land uses. “So, we took the findings in the report; we presented it to the City Council and got to work. They gave us a two-year work plan, and we’re The Perch in Downtown Dublin Courtesy of The Independent