Plaza Design Objectives
1. Connect People and Modes: Seamlessly link pedestrians, cyclists, buses, and all rail transit, including future BART access, minimizing conflicts and ensuring universal accessibility and safety.
2. Create a Strong Sense of Arrival: Establish distinctive gateways, clear wayfinding, intuitive circulation, and welcoming design elements that make the station plaza a recognizable destination.
3. Celebrate Heritage: Preserve view corridors from El Camino Real near Franklin Street to the historic train depot and between the depot and signal tower. Use public art, interpretive elements, and signage to share Santa Clara’s story and highlight the historic depot as a community landmark.
4. Activate and Humanize the Plaza: Bring active frontages, retail, dining, and services to the plaza. Design a vibrant, human-scale environment with greenery, seating, and amenities that make it easy to combine daily errands with transit use, encouraging people to linger, and encourages community interaction.
Plaza Design Objectives
5. Leverage Unique Transit-orient ed Development Opportunity on Public Land: Advance shared VTA/City goals of leveraging development potential near transit, generating foot traffic, transit ridership, and revenue for transit operations, multimodal improvements, and potentially defray the cost of some publicly available parking underneath the plaza. Support mixed-use development (300,000–400,000 sq ft) on publicly–owned land in the current transit parking lot that reflects community priorities and delivers long-term value for people who live, work, learn, and play in the area.
6. Foster Community Life: Provide flexible spaces for activities such as farmers’ markets, performances, and other community events while supporting everyday commuter activity.
7. Advance Sustainability: Integrate green infrastructure, drought- tolerant landscaping, and energy-efficient building design to reinforce environmental goals.