College Avenue and East Mountain Study

Urban Design

The corner of College Avenue and East Mountain (formerly the location of the “Mountain Inn”) is well known in Fayetteville Arkansas both for its complicated past and future potential. To better understand the challenges and opportunities of this site, Miller Boskus Lack has undertaken an extensive study to determine a direction for redevelopment.

 We envision a simple but dignified 6-story mixed-use building. The proposal is a podium scheme, with a split-level base of type I construction containing parking and retail under 5 levels of type III construction containing one, two, and three bedroom apartments.  The building is carefully designed to provide flexibility between unit types, allowing the development to be responsive to changing market conditions. Adequate parking for the building’s 113 residential units is provided on-site behind a liner of ground level retail and commercial office space totaling 15,000 square feet.

 The architecture is civic to its core, responding deferentially to adjacent historic buildings while providing activation for long dormant streetscapes. Special care is given to the scale of massing and articulation, with context sensitive responses to three widely varying street frontages – the 3-story human scale of East Center Street, the auto-oriented College Avenue, and the vast southern views from East Mountain Street.