Bellevue Botanical Garden is a 53-acre garden owned and managed by the City of Bellevue in partnership with the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society. This urban refuge exhibits cultivated gardens, restored woodlands, natural wetlands, and offers educational programs and volunteer opportunities. BBG receives over 300,000 visitors a year and is one of Bellevue’s most popular destinations. A parks levy will allow BBG to expand in the coming years. Miasto worked with BBG to set a roadmap to guide the expansion, meet the needs of its growing popularity and intensity of use, and integrate with nearby large infrastructure projects such as Eastrail, the light rail, the Lake-to-Lake Trail, and the densifying Wilburton neighborhood.

Harvey Milk Plaza, at the center of the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco, is being reimagined as a neighborhood gathering space and transit hub that honors Harvey’s legacy and the LGBTQ+ community. Miasto is helping to set the redeveloped plaza up for success by advising on operational and management practices, operating budgets, sustainable revenue streams, and logistics related to activation. (image credit: Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza)

Phillips Square, in Boston’s Chinatown, is transforming from a tactical plaza into a permanent green space for the neighborhood. The re-envisioned plaza will provide a community gathering space, green infrastructure and heat resilience, activation that supports neighborhood businesses and artists, and a place to elevate and celebrate Chinatown’s rich history and culture. Miasto is working with Sasaki, the lead designer, on a maintenance and management strategy to keep Phillips Square in top condition and serve its intended purposes for years to come. (image credit: Sasaki)

The City of Seattle and its partners have been working hard to revitalize downtown Seattle as a welcoming, safe, and inclusive neighborhood. Through the efforts of the mayor’s Downtown Activation Plan (DAP), the city is now experiencing progress in its commercial core, a resurgence of small businesses, and active streetscapes. Westlake Park is a key public space for the downtown activation efforts, as it is at the center of downtown and is known as the unofficial “town square”. To support the DAP and Westlake Park’s revival, Miasto is working with Kinetic West on setting the stage on policies and strategies, bringing together case studies of other successful downtown plazas that acted as catalysts for revitalizations and building a roadmap for the transformation.

Kennett Greenway is a 14-mile multi-modal Greenway that connects regional parks and open spaces in the broader Kennett community. The Greenway is grounded in the principles of furthering community health, the local economy, and access to nature. Miasto is currently working alongside Kennett Trails Alliance (KTA) to plan for Kennett Greenway’s ongoing operations and maintenance, a sustainable operational revenue model, and the integration of KTA’s vision with the community development projects underway in the region. In addition to O+M and revenue planning, Miasto is helping KTA with a governance plan that will bring together the shared resources of the various municipalities and nonprofits in the region that share access to the trail.  

The intersections at Third Ave at Pike and Pine have long experienced challenges, and yet these locations are vital to Seattle’s business and tourism districts. With funding from the Downtown Activation Plan and the Office of Economic Development, Miasto is collaborating with the Downtown Seattle Association to bring activation and physical transformations to these two intersections. The transformation will engage local artists and include both ground-level and overhead enhancements. The Pine intersection will have a forest theme, and the Pike intersection an ocean theme, highlighting the connection to the Public Market and the newly transformed Waterfront. Miasto is overseeing the improvements from concept, permitting, procurement, and installation. The physical improvements, along with activations, are scheduled to be completed by late May 2025.