Castro Street Pedestrian Plaza

As the heart of Downtown Mountain View, Castro Street is the social center of the city and hosts a unique mix of restaurants, retail stores, and office spaces. Yet, the street design is in need of an upgrade to match the city’s ambitious vision for the future of downtown. The City of Mountain View partnered with Gehl to study existing public life and public space, facilitate community engagement, and develop a concept street design for the 100 block of Castro Street. These efforts followed parallel city-led projects like the Grade Separation and Access project that would close off the northern edge of Castro Street to vehicles and create a safe underpass for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross the Caltrain rail corridor.

Buy-in from the community and business owners

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Mountain View pivoted its focus to creating public life within county-sanctioned public health guidelines. Gehl designed and implemented a pilot–Summer StrEATs–that closed off the 100 to 400 blocks to vehicles while maintaining cross-street traffic. The pilot provided valuable insight into the latent demand for more walkable public space in downtown Mountain View.

The team conducted stakeholder engagement and gathered feedback on the temporary street closure to inform long-term design alternatives that would improve pedestrian and bicycle access and connectivity while balancing public transit, service loading and access, and private vehicle access.

To understand the impact these designs would have on traffic and transit service in downtown Mountain View, Gehl worked with Kimley-Horn to alleviate potential conflicts, refine the design alternatives, and craft a successful, pedestrian-focused 100-block. The designs were further informed by findings from a Public Life Public Space study, economic analysis, and drawing comparisons between Castro Street and other successful main streets in North America.

These design alternatives were shared with the local businesses in an outreach workshop hosted by the team, in order to identify the best options, and ensure that business owners felt confident in the future of their businesses within the city’s plans for a more pedestrian-friendly Castro Street.

Downtown Mountain View has an authentic, human-scaled urban fabric full of potential waiting to be activated.

Impact Analysis

As a result of these efforts, the Mountain View City Council is expected to recommend moving forward with a redesign of Castro Street’s 100 block, building on the best design alternatives proposed by Gehl in this phase. This project is currently under development and is expected to be completed in late 2021.

Design alternatives include adjustments to the street, such as removing curbs, increase accessibility and make navigating downtown more enjoyable for pedestrians.