Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so part of this site will be to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of photos produced for a proposal for Jasper, Indiana taken in the fall of 2008. The weather was not great the day the photos were taken, so they were converted to black-and-white.
When we were working on the Scottsdale Downtown Plan and renting an apartment in Downtown Scottsdale, we’d often drive down Thomas Road on our treks into Phoenix. On our way we’d pass by an unusual mobile home park featuring mobile homes flanked by permanently-built structures. After driving by countless times, we pulled over one day and took these photos. It’s called Oasis Park and features a fantastic array of mid-century architecture, both factory-built and site-built.
“Unique” is the word Oasis Park uses to describe itself on its website:
The word “unique” is one of the few in the English language that cannot be modified. There is no “very unique” or “a little unique” or “somewhat unique”. It stands alone. Above all else.
So, too, does Oasis Park. From the one-of-a-kind architecture of its homes to the perfect Scottsdale location to its welcoming residents, Oasis Park stands alone as that “unique” place to call home in the Valley of the Sun.
Reading up on the park on the website and other web articles, we learn that Oasis Park was created in the mid-1950s on nearly 15 acres in the midst of cotton fields. A drive-in theater sat across the road, long since replaced with office buildings. The first residents moved arrived in 1957 to find shuffleboard courts, a putting green, a 54-foot heated pool with a rock waterfall, a library inside the clubhouse, an on-site hobby shop for men, and a pink laundry room with matching pink washers and pink dryers. The amenities alone help set the park apart from other mobile home communities. Eventually 95 couples filled the park, maneuvering massive 55-foot mobile homes into their designated lots. Residents were required to add “ramadas” to the existing structures, and some opted to add more than what was required.
According to the reports, most residents were (and still are) winter visitors, maintaining homes elsewhere. Though originally a rental community, residents now own their homes and are shareholders in the Oasis Park Company, the corporation they formed in order to buy the land on which their homes sit. Each resident now 1/95th of the total land and decisions about the park must be approved by the majority.
The community was always intended for older couples whose children were grown, restricted to members 55 years old and older. At one time, Oasis Park would not let in widows; however, many of the homes are now occupied by single women. Prospective buyers are interviewed and must be approved by the Oasis Park membership.
The original mobile home is still part of the structure, as a rule, but each home has a uniqueness of its own. This comes both from the mobile home and the ramada structures, which create interesting compositions. In some examples the original mobile home is a distinctive element unto itself, whereas others are so fully integrated to be nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the structure.
I’m not sure which aspect of these structures I like best. Many (maybe even most) of the mobile homes are midcentury vintage, with cool styling that has come full circle to be very hip. But then the ramadas themselves are pretty great too. The two together are like nothing I’d seen before.
From 2007-09 we worked on the Downtown Plan for Scottsdale, Arizona. This was a particularly special project since I’d grown up in Scottsdale, twenty years earlier. The downtown was going through a resurgence and people were excited to work on the plan.
Like the rest of our projects, there were lots of photos. This first set was taken for the proposal early on an April morning in 2007.
Earlier this month I uploaded photos taken on a summer evening by our staff for the Comprehensive Plan in Logansport, Indiana. Here are a few more, taken the same evening, of corn fields outside town.
Photos by Amber Eisan and Mishayla Binkerd.
In 2010-2011 we assisted the City of Foster City with the existing conditions analysis for the Land Use & Circulation Element of its General Plan. This involved lots of photos.
Foster City is a master-planned “new town” founded in the 1960s on engineered landfill in the marshes of the San Francisco Bay. The city was named after T. Jack Foster, a real estate magnate who owned much of the land comprising the city and who was instrumental in its initial design.
The neighborhoods in Foster City are numbered: Neighborhoods 1 through 9, as well as C, L, PT, TC and VP. The street names area also named around themes such as fish, ports and famous explorers.
The first homes in Neighborhood 1 were completed in 1964. Homes were provided by three developers: Kay Builders, Duc and Elliot and Joseph Eichler, chosen by city founder T. Jack Foster to provide variety. Homes from each builder were situated together on each street to provide variety. The sales were brisk and Neighborhood 2 soon followed, with homes by the same three developers. The single family homes were completed by 1969, though apartments and townhouses continued to be developed into the next decades.
The photos here show Neighborhood 1 and 2, with streets named after famous ships and birds, respectively.
In 2008-09 we assisted the City of Logansport, Indiana with a new Comprehensive Plan. One of the best decisions we made was to include two local college students from Logansport on our team, Amber and Mishayla. They helped us facilitate workshops, wrote and edited documents, and took lots and lots of photos.
Over the course of the plan we took dozens and dozens of photos, but one group of photos was especially memorable. One August evening Amber and Mishayla headed out after they’d finished work and took a series of photos in the twilight hours. Looking through the photos, I can feel the warm heavy air of the midwest summer, and I want to go out for frozen custard.
Photos by Amber Eisan and Mishayla Binkerd.
Back in May I posted some photos that were taken for our work on the Downtown Napa Specific Plan. There are lots more though – here’s another sampling.
As part of our consulting work, we assisted the City of Belvedere with the update of its General Plan. Belvedere Island has a network of pedestrian lanes and stairways, photographed here in 2009:
Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so an aspect of this site is to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of photos from 2008 of the planned community of Verrado in Buckeye, Arizona:
Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so part of this site will be to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of duotone photos produced for a proposal for Fitchburg, Wisconsin, taken in 2009:
