209: St. Augustine Plaza

St. Augustine Plaza is a large commercial and residential project in downtown Tallahassee. St. Augustine Plaza sits in the heart of Tallahassee to give the community a place to live and shop. We created this project to provide young people with living space and access to retail shops below their homes. The project includes a first-floor space with parking and retail stores such as a barber shop, a restaurant and a convenience store. The second and third floors include a total of 20 two-bedroom apartment units. We designed this project to enhance the community with great living space while keeping it affordable, green and socially friendly.

We faced several challenges with this project, including a small property size. When dealing with downtown lots, many are small with limited space. We needed to arrange the building, parking and water collection pond to maximize their function. The code required a certain number of parking spaces, which made arranging the parking quite challenging. Another challenge with small properties was fitting construction equipment on the site. To address this, we constructed the project in different segments. We overcame all challenges by working through many alternatives to find the best solution.