At 45 acres, the Town Center is a cohesive integration of department stores, a movie theater, parks, townhouses, street retail, and apartments. With several restaurants and discreetly located structured parking, the development serves as the area’s primary destination for shopping and entertainment. The main retail street is arranged as a graceful arc, creating an effective orienting device that links Patriot boulevard, the area’s primary traffic corridor, to the Town Center’s historic focal point, the 1930’s era control tower and hangar that were an important part of the air station’s role as a pilot training facility. A centrally located plaza called Navy Park is a key component of the overall design. Bringing to mind town squares of the past, the landscaped park provides a vantage point from which to view the renovated hangar and is embellished with sculptures and a fountain.

Because an active and vibrant street life was imperative to the project’s success, on-site housing became a vital program component. Two collections of gabled townhouses are located at either end of the development, each enclave encircling a quiet greensward. The 154 townhouses are intended to suggest the character of traditional nineteenth century row housing and use projected bays and canopies to add rhythm and dimension to the long facades. Rows of townhouse were further “laminated” to the adjacent parking garages – a screening technique which successfully hides what most consider an eyesore.

Additionally, 181 apartments were placed in mixed-use buildings above retail stores. These long buildings are carefully unified through the consistent use of repeated architectural elements: red brick, projected balconies, slate roofs, and punched residential windows. Once accomplished, the carefully designed system was then “broken down” by use of a deliberately irregular rhythm of gables, window placement, window type, color usage, and signage location, thereby creating a finely tuned relationship between consistency and chaos to bring a sense of realism and character to the street experience. The building corners facing Navy Park were further enhanced and differentiated by employing glass window walls, relating to the historic hangar across the street.