Linkage – 2515 El Camino Real

Project Description

The Olive Garden restaurant formerly operated on this site on El Camino Real between Sherman and Grant Avenues in Palo Alto.  The stand-alone restaurant building was on the Sherman corner while the remaining site area, nearly an acre, was a surface parking lot catering to the El Camino Real automobile corridor while ignoring the California Avenue community and commercial zone to the north.

The client’s brief included demolishing the existing building to create a new mixed-use residential, retail and office building that maximizes the allowable building height, floor area and residential density allowed for the site.

The architects saw this as an opportunity to not only solve for the client’s brief of a mixed-use building that brought much needed housing to Palo Alto but to also create a project that solves for the community in a larger way.  The surface parking lot was an eyesore that did not define the sidewalk or street edge; it was hot and unfriendly and provided no public space or connections to the community beyond.  The site was a ‘no-person’ land.

Envisioned as a linkage between the El Camino Real corridor and the California Avenue commercial neighborhood district, this project successfully reinforces the El Camino Real sidewalk and street edge with ground-floor street-facing, retail windows with two-story townhouses above.  The thirteen townhouses strengthen the street edge with increased building height but also introduce activity on the street with a syncopation and rhythm of the two-story units with outdoor street facing balconies and street trees.  The row of townhouses is terminated at the Sherman corner by the second-floor office space that wraps down Sherman Ave, stepping back to create an outdoor courtyard where ground floor retail space opens up and planters and street furniture provide a place to congregate away from busy El Camino Real, providing an entry and linkage to the neighborhood beyond.

At the courtyard end of the covered arcade that runs along the back side of the retail space is the main building lobby, open air and accessible all day and night, and providing a pedestrian linkage through the site to the street to the south.

The deep residential balcony recesses, overhangs along El Camino Real and vertical glass shading fins at the extensive floor-to-ceiling office windows provide sun shading of the interiors while the rooftop solar array provides on-site power generation. Lush vegetation in raised bio-filtration planters soften the small parking area behind the building and cleanse surface water.  Most of the facility’s parking is provided in a below grade garage.