It’s been a while since the last time I did one of these big development roundups, so let’s do another one, covering the current hotbed of activity - the 7th Street corridor between downtown and the museums. A lot has changed since the last time I wrote about these developments, so let’s dive right in.

Museum Place is really making significant strides in construction these days. The area around the development is a world of torn-up pavement, orange cones, fences, and cranes as work steadily moves from the big 7th/University/Camp Bowie/Bailey intersection back into the neighborhood.

Above, the big building of the development, One Museum Place, is getting more glass installed as its facade installation continues. This building will be home to ground-level retail, office space, and condos on the upper two floors.

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The area shown in the red circle above is the subject in question - as part of the Museum Place development, a public plaza is will be constructed at the reworked intersection of West 7th Street and Arch Adams (Map). How can a plaza occupy the middle of a street? Read on and find out - it’s an interesting bit of urban design.

The problem is thus - how to create a large public space in the development, while not taking too much room from the buildings themselves? You could certainly close off a street to do so, but you’d have to close off a smaller street, and it’s likely to be too out-of-the-way to get much use. No, the plaza needs to be the heart of the development. That means 7th Street - but you can’t permanently close off 7th. It’s too crucial to the connectivity of the area. A way had to be found to create a large public space that could be closed for events but left open to car traffic the rest of the time - while still slowing traffic enough that people would not feel intimidated by the sometimes speedy pace of cars on 7th.

Finally, an ingenious solution was devised. [Read more]