East Beach is rising upon land that once was, by any metric, a slum. Once the single-family residential portions (master planned by Andres Duany of DPZ) neared completion, attention was focused upon the retail/mixed-use quadrants. Prior to Shook Kelley’s involvement, three other architects had been retained to solve a design riddle that required: 1) maintaining the high, neo-traditional design standards established by the single-family neighborhood; 2) designing a variety of for-rent and for-sale housing; and 3) incorporating conventional office and retail formats, particularly that of a 35,000 SF supermarket, without compromising the scale and pedestrian nature of the place. All three architects were judged by the owner to have failed on at least one of the above. Shook Kelley successfully accomplished the task. And, in the process, we added a fourth item that will be crucial to realizing the goal that East Beach become a socially-responsive community.

Shook Kelley led the development team through a branding exercise, one that focused upon establishing East Beach as a national model for sustainability—in both the narrow metrics identified through building technology, and through the broader construct of community form. The missing piece was clearly the provision of workforce housing to serve the approximately 500 service-based people who will be a part of the daily life of future East Beach. This new focus, as expressed within a comprehensive brand strategy along with a number of other specific actions, has the potential to leverage community support for infrastructure funding and other initiatives.