ced 152 individual independent project | 2017
Jeffery Bridger, Senior Scientist
created for use by Ferguson Township
This proposal is out of date. An updated proposal for the North Atherton corridor: Central Ferguson.
The development around North Atherton Street in Ferguson Township near State College, PA is composed of non-walkable, sprawling strip mall development. The area includes significant public transit corridors which use Atherton St to move between Penn State Campus and student housing on Aaron Drive and Vairo Boulevard. Both single-family housing and high-density student housing surround the area, as well as an Elementary School and large park. This site is ripe for redevelopment as a mixed-use, walkable set of neighborhoods with good public transit service which could create a town center for Ferguson Township.
The site was chosen because of its abundant transit access to downtown and campus. The V and N trunks together with their express counterparts have an average headway of four minutes during weekdays when Penn State University is in session. The new development would combine the trunks from Atherton St and Martin St onto a new, central transit corridor.
The goal of the project was to increase dense development on transit corridors to create new urban centers to increase transit ridership, increase market-rate and affordable housing, and decrease the use of sprawl development typologies in the Centre Region. The recommended building heights reflect this goal for density.
To create urban centers people would want to spend time in, the public realm would need to be adapted to pedestrians rather than cars. Each existing and proposed road in the project would be altered to increase sidewalk widths, decrease crossing distances, increase parallel parking allocation, and decrease travel lanes where traffic volumes allowed.
This proposal is out of date. An updated proposal for the North Atherton corridor: Northland, Ferguson Township.