Texas Town Square 2.0

Growing Texas Cities have an opportunity to create a new generation of lively public spaces that reflect the community's history, build resiliency and create a front porch for future generations.

In Pflugerville, Texas, a city hall under construction was designed as the growing city’s new home, including a café and rooftop terrace and a central lobby that connects to a town green. Developed in a public-private partnership (P3) with Griffin Swinerton, the four-story, 111,875 square-foot project is the anchor of Downtown East, a new downtown district with housing, retail, a hotel and recreation center linked to a central plaza.

“We want to create the city’s living room,” says Jeremy Hart, LPA’s Director Civic + Cultural. “It was designed to be a very open and welcoming part of the community, where everybody feels like it belongs to them.”

Across Texas, fast-growing cities like Pflugerville are facing an unprecedented opportunity to develop a new generation of town centers that support communities and create new places that make the community a home. As these once tiny towns continue to grow at a rapid pace, LPA’s integrated design teams are collaborating with civic leaders to create lively, vibrant public spaces that reflect the city’s history and offer flexibility and resiliency for the future.

Building Community

Think of it as the Texas town square 2.0. The traditional Texas town square, usually anchored by the courthouse or county seat, was the center of community life. More than simply a collection of storefronts, the squares live on as places to hang out and meet your neighbors, an enduring part of the community.

Around Texas, cities are asking tough questions, exploring how to take the best of the traditional town square and develop new, resilient centers that meet the needs of the next generations. How can these civic facilities build a better sense of community? How can we create a town center that serves many local needs? Is a new city hall or library an isolated project or part of larger scheme?

Several key elements are essential to develop these new town centers. But the process always starts with a deep community engagement process, to discover a community’s values and passions, while helping citizens visualize what is possible.

In Longview, Texas, plans to redevelop the Broughton Recreation Center began with a multifaceted approach to reach out to the historically Black neighborhood, which for years had felt overlooked by planners. Working with wary community leaders, design teams hosted workshops, walked neighborhoods and met with families to make sure they were included at every step of the process. Their input can be seen in the open, welcoming facility that moved the branch library front and center and spotlights new amenities like an esports room.

“One of the biggest things we did was just come in and have a listening session with the folks in the neighborhood,” says Craig Drone, LPA Studio Director in Dallas. “We wanted to hear what their needs were and what they’d like to see, and we learned how the center impacts them and how important this facility was to them.”

Town centers designed to reflect and support a community, become part of the community. When everyone is involved, the community feels a sense of ownership and pride, a place to come together.

Making History

Layering in a strong sense of history can add pride and richness to new town centers. “We want to create destinations that merge new landmarks and bolster and support the historic ones,” says Sophia Razzaque, Managing Director of LPA’s Austin studio.

But it’s important to bring in that history authentically. A recent park project in San Antonio incorporated wading pools informed by nearby limestone cliffs. The redevelopment of the San Marcos Town Center in San Marcos, California, was a seminal project for many LPA designers. After a deep exploration of local culture, the center’s defining element became two oak trees and a fountain, reflecting the site’s importance to local Native Americans.

“We need to ask the right questions,” says Rich Bienvenu, LPA’s Director Landscape Architecture. “What is the spirit of the place?” Is it local materials? Is it local history? Is it something that’s coming from the site’s past or the geography and environment?”

New town centers can serve as a bridge from past to present. The first phase of a master-planned civic center in Moorpark, California, a net-zero-energy, 18,000-square-foot library, will be situated at the west end of the city’s High Street to function as a connection between the historic district and planned residential and mixed-used developments.

“The project is really driven by a strong desire to bring new life to the historic downtown core,” Hart says. “As the community reinvigorates their downtown, the library will function as an anchor to that revitalization.”

In Wimberley, Texas, the expansion of the community’s beloved library was inspired by the city’s founding 175 years ago as a trading post at the confluence of two significant waterways. The new all-electric extension was one of the first public projects in the state to participate in One Water, a program focused on water stewardship and conservation. In a region characterized by extreme droughts and devastating floods, designers integrated a system of retention basins, and above-ground rainwater tanks and swales that double as natural playgrounds to manage 100% of the library’s water on site, creating a teaching point for this and future generations howto live in harmony with water in the region.

“The library’s design was driven by the context and the community priorities,” Hart says. “It’s a modern facility, but the community’s history and roots are in there.”

Planning for the Future

Developing the next-generation town center requires planning for future uses and the evolving community. Town centers can provide robustness and resilience that will have a long-term impact as cities face new and ongoing challenges.

In today’s town center, it’s about building a sense of place that goes beyond the old town square. A city hall or library project is part of the larger civic puzzle. “It’s really about master planning,” Bienvenu says. “Thinking beyond the context of just that first funded project that you have the money for.”

That first project can act as a foundation for a lively center with a variety of activities to serve different needs and users. The courthouse, historically the anchor of the traditional Texas town square, can be integrated into the town center of today in new ways. In Pflugerville, the municipal court is placed front and center in the new city hall, but it’s part of Downtown East, which has loftier goals, that include a vibrant mixed-use and retail development.

The courthouse can be just the starting point for a transformation. Walkable mixed-used districts around the courthouse create vibrancy and a sense of community life, developing a place that is very different than a fancy mall. Together with municipal facilities, mixed-used developments can invite sociability and active spaces that are easy to access and feel good to the community.

“So many communities are looking to have a vibrant downtown,” Drone says. “That area wants to have multiple kinds of activities, so there is something for the kids, as well as restaurants and places to shop, places to meet others and serve the entire family.”

An integrated approach addresses the big picture and allows for a seamless connection between parts that add up to a whole. Plazas, pedestrian connections and programmed green spaces become part of the plan. Older buildings can be evaluated for renovation, future use, or even relocation.

For the County of Orange, a public-private partnership with Griffin Structures as lead developer, LPA as the design partner and Swinerton Builders as the general contractor, the design brought together two new six-story, 250,000-square-feet administrative buildings, the county supervisors’ meeting space and a “one-stop-shop” for 13 county departments around a 35,000 square-foot central plaza. As part of the process, the entirety of the county’s downtown portfolio and operations was evaluated, including condition assessments of 22 occupied facilities, to develop a 20-year master plan to revitalize the county’s community assets.

Creating Pride of Place

In Pflugerville, Downtown East will transform the center of the city, creating a very different town square. The central lobby of the city hall links the plaza, city hall and an adjoining café to Gilleland Creek and 56 miles of trails, as well as the surrounding neighborhood. The plan includes a bridge over the creek to extend the existing Main Street and reinforce the heart of the city.

Creating a mixed-use, multi-use atmosphere around civic facilities helps bring people together and add resources around the municipal functions. People are naturally drawn to these places. They are looking for that community “front porch,” where they can meet their neighbors. More than anything, the new town square helps create a civic identity, something many small towns are still working to discover. From supporting local programs to designing more resilient buildings, developing centers created around the community’s input leads to special places treasured by the citizens.

“What gives a place heart is the ability to bring the community together,” Hart says. “And it’s special when it feels like it’s theirs.”