Palo Alto holds second community meeting on Coverley master-plan concepts

City of Palo Alto staff and the project design team presented three high-level master-plan concepts for the Coverley site and solicited detailed community feedback at a public workshop convened as the project's second community meeting.

Kristen, a City of Palo Alto Community Services Department staff member, opened the session and introduced the evening's format, saying the meeting would review concept designs and collect community preferences for a later combined design. George, with Concordia, an architecture, planning and community engagement firm, summarized the team's aim: to refine prior work from a 2019 master plan and to translate community program preferences into a single plan.

The presentation reviewed three distinct site-layout concepts: a diagonal promenade that emphasizes a continuous bike/pedestrian spine linking Nelson Drive to Middlefield Road; a grid scheme with smaller, distributed green spaces and orthogonal circulation; and a linear scheme with a large central common outdoor node. Elizabeth, of Concordia's design team, told the room the concepts "generally increase usable indoor and outdoor area without increasing the overall site footprint" by…