Lubbock is a rare American city in that it has no downtown left at all. Its public places are malls and strip malls. At Texas Tech, the traditional American town-gown urban pattern of connecting a university with the surrounding city or town through a commercial district is absent.

This project aimed to establish such a mixed-use district on the western edge of Texas Tech for the benefit of both the college and surrounding neighborhoods. A grid of streets of diverse character, a park-once system and a variety of buildings that define a pedestrian-intensive network of public space provided the urban framework for this development. The program included town-center-scaled commercial/retail uses, and both student and market housing in various architectural types