1connecting to the lake

... to the lake

2downtown master plan

TM

3connecting to the lake

Prepared by:

in association with:

Downtown Solutions Economic Planning Systems, Inc.Fuscoe Engineering

This master plan has been produced for the City of Lake Elsinore Redevelopment

Agency (RDA) and the City of Lake Elsinore.

“City Hall is not on Main Street, Main Street is City Hall” Councilman Tom Buckley

4 downtown master planTM

This page intentionally left blank

5connecting to the lake

table of contents

6 downtown master planTM

This page intentionally left blank

7connecting to the lake

8TM

downtown master plan

9connecting to the lake

The Redevelopment Agency of Lake Elsinore is sponsoring the development of this Downtown Master Plan, which will set the vision for the downtown area in collaboration with the broader Lake Elsinore community.

MASTER PLAN ORGANIZATION

It is important to understand that although the master plan is comprised of the four different elements, they should be viewed as being fully integrated. To fully understand the vision for the downtown, all fourdocuments must be read as a whole.

VISION: A CITY OF ITS’ TIMEThe Lake Elsinore Downtown Master Plan sought to preserve historic assets within downtown while evolving a vision and character of a “Cityof Its’ Time.” The Master Plan is not a replication of other places, nor is it attempt to mimic the past. The plan looks to the assets that are authentic. Utilizing assets from both, the past and present, the plan places emphasis on an eye to what the future might be. The focus of the plan reaches beyond simply a recreation of historic looking buildings as a character generator and a method to create value and place. The plan focus has broader economic implications.

The plan instead, looks to assets such as outdoor recreation and a resort environment centered around a downtown city on a lake, as a methodology to create place through a quality of life point of view. If you have things that are authentic to a specific place, existing buildings, an agricultural heritage, great natural resources, cultural diversity, and others, the plan should build upon theses as a spirit. The Lake Elsinore Downtown Plan promotes the reaching to the cultural spirit of the people of Lake Elsinore as a driver for the physical manifestation of the development. People are what create place. If the plan is successful in reaching to this spirit, then people will choose to invest, live, work, educate, and play in Downtown Lake Elsinore.

This Downtown Master Plan is essentially comprosed of four parts - the vision master plan, the economic and feasibility analysis, the downtown code, and the “Key to Downtown” Implementation Plan. This master plan summarizes the vision for the downtown master plan.

10 downtown master plan

A QUALITY PUBLIC REALMThe Lake Elsinore Downtown Master Plan places great emphasis on the quality of the public realm and its role in creating an integrated fabric. The entire public realm culminates at the waterfront with the development of a world class waterfront park and pier. This reestablishes the lake as the most valuable resource within downtown, both from an environmental perspective and as an economic generator. Essential to the reconnection to the lake is the realignment of Main Street in order to terminate on the pier and waterfront park.

MAIN STREET AS A GREAT STREETMain Street will become the great street in Downtown Lake Elsinore, evolving from a mile-long monotonous corridor to an activated street utilizing a 5-minute walk radius area as a defining method for distinct

neighborhoods or districts to be developed. These districts will coexist, providing a unique place within each along a diverse corridor. The corridor will be enhanced both by distinct changes in land use mix and character. The corridor will become memorableby the way in which civic buildings and public spaces are positioned to create a sequence of events and experiences both from a vehicular and a pedestrian point of view. The sequence of events critically sets the stage for the ultimate termination and celebration of the lake at a public park and a pier at the waterfront edge.

EMBRACE ORGANIC GROWTHThe plan embraces organic growth. Originally, Main Street was zoned for commercial only in the General Plan update. The Downtown Master Plan has built in flexibility to allow for organic growth to occur naturally over time. Thus the entire corridor is mixed use. Each district is focused at a lead land use type, which will drive the character, and create the unique asset that fits together with the other districts to create pieces that strengthen the whole. The plan offers the ability for the market to drive timing of private development while the public sector has the ability to seed public development such that the entire plan is not subject to waiting for the market, and the market is not forced to under build but to build to the market and beyond when conditions are right.

Many plans compromise in favor of building what is available in the marketplace today, versus allowing for the plan to evolve so that future quality development sites are protected. As an example, buildings shall be constructed such that the ground floors are designed to accommodate quality retail when the retail environment is right. A commercial/retail strategy has been implemented in the plan to ensure that a road

TM

11connecting to the lake

SUSTAIN DAILY NEEDSDowntown must also be a sustainable provider of daily needs. Many of the vacant lots within downtown should be either permanently or temporarily reactivated as sites for crop production, vegetables, fruit and nut trees, plant nurseries for materials that can either be used or harvested for landscape improvements. The development of a Garden District will set the standard for public and private realm to be sustainable resources. The development of a potential home owners association is strongly encouraged to govern, manage, plant, harvest, and market the food production from the gardens both in the private yards, as well as in the public streetscapes and parking lots of the district. All surface parking lots, building roofs, etc. should be utilized as opportunities to provide sustainable resources from green roofs, to geothermal energy, to solar energy capture, etc.

Each downtown street plays a specific role in water quality through the use of “green technologies” from bioswales, to rain gardens, and the ultimate recapture of the concrete channel for the creation of a riparian park corridor as it runs through downtown.

The Lake Elsinore Downtown Master Plan was born of a vision achieved through several public workshops and is the direct result of community consensus. The community during the workshop process was asked to take a walk down Main Street and to envision what they want their community to be. The Master Plan has put to physical form the vision of a community - a legacy for future generations within the City of Lake Elsinore. The goal is to achieve a “City of Its’ Time.”

map is adhered to as development occurs. Optimum densities are achieved within each development, retail is integrated in optimum locations first (where retail currently is strong) to bolster the existing condition, avoid competition that is not optimal to the success of the existing retail, avoid disjointed spotty commercial/retail development, and create increased development values radiating from the quality place that has been made. The downtown plan calls for public parking districts to be incorporated in a means to pool parking deck developments. This pooling strategy will provide for sharing of parking spaces by the surrounding mixed use developments in an effort to provide a shared cost model of development. The goal of this strategy is to attract new high quality development and investments in downtown. The plan anticipates and encourages a park-once-and-walk methodology.

CAPITALIZE ON INVESTMENTS IN A DOWN MARKET

The current market is limited on what can be developed and financed. The Downtown Master Plan looks creatively at how to utilize the current public building needs with the development of affordable housing, and the need for earthquake retrofit, to develop an initial development plan that can be implemented in the next 5 years. The plan calls for pubic investment in an effort to draw private interest in investment in downtown. This area, referred to as the “key to downtown”, has been identified as a first phase effort that incorporated an integrated mixed use civic center as a catalyst for quality public private developments.

12TM