Fulton Street is one of New York City’s most important river-to-river corridors and the Crossroads area is one of its oldest retail districts with many registered historic landmarks. The area is being dramatically affected by redevelopment of the former World Trade Center site and new transit center, the anticipated expansion of the South Street Seaport and the predicted doubling of Lower Manhattan’s residential population over the next five years.

Working for the New York Economic Development Corporation, we collaborated with a large group of regulatory agencies to develop consensus among them and a program for renovating and restoring the diverse building facades that line the streets. Retail market analysis combined with historic building research and documentation and our experience in adaptive reuse of national historic buildings and districts around the country lead to the development of guidelines and architectural standards for building facades and storefronts that preserves the corridor’s history while stimulating economic growth.

The result is an innovative incentive program that establishes both a process and clear guidelines for the revitalization of buildings along this key corridor. We were later selected to continue this work and implement the program, providing design services to dozens of store and building owners in an exciting urban transformation.