Sacramento, CA

VISIONING, NARRATIVE AND STRATEGY

The project goal for Downtown Commons, located in Sacramento, was to create a human-scale experience to share with friends. Our three-fold approach always starts with an exploration of people first. The audience provides the anchor for all project decisions. Through our audience studies, we saw just how much Sacramento was changing: foodies, tech-types, nature lovers, back-to-the-land folks with style are attracted to the state capital for its proximity to nature and accessible sophistication. Next, we explored the lifestyles and culture, where we noticed a community for whom eating local and with integrity was a priority. Finally, with enough knowledge, we considered how to craft the destination. Our focus became creating memorable moments, a series of remarkable human-scale experiences, and a program to provide a million reasons to keep coming back. We created the invisible wins: the guidelines, the tenant mix, and other touch points to help define, guide, and future proof the development.