Two months of intensive work has paid off for a five-person team from Arizona State University, which will split a $50,000 first prize for winning the Urban Land Institute competition to design a new master plan for the Strip District.

	An artist's rendering of a plan by a team from Arizona State University, which won the Urban Land Institute competition to design a new master plan for the Strip District. The plan is expected to feature retail, office and residential space clustered around a fan-shaped plaza that connects to a riverfront park. Click photo for larger image.

The heart of the hypothetical scheme, proposed for a 57-acre site owned by the Buncher Co., is a loft-type development inspired by the Strip's warehouse buildings.

It will feature retail, office and residential space clustered around a fan-shaped plaza that connects to a riverfront park. The $235 million first phase also includes a marina near the plaza and a $100 million 500-room hotel just east of the convention center.

"It hit all the criteria -- design, management, finance, market response -- all quite well," said jury chairman Joseph Brown yesterday at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, where the competition was held. "This is the beginning, I hope, of the formative ideas that could change this waterfront."

The Arizona team of four men and one woman competed against teams from Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University/University of California-Berkeley.

"It's extremely exciting to work with a group of people and come through," said Matthew Muller, a member of the winning team who is pursuing a master's degree in architecture. "We were up against great competition."

Muller said he may spend some of his $10,000 share of the prize on a trip to South America or Africa this summer.

The Arizona State team, which also included students in environmental planning and business administration, presented ideas for a new retail, entertainment and residential district centered between the Veterans and 16th Street bridges. Its 120 units of loft-style housing would be aimed at young professionals.

The new development would link to the Downtown Cultural District via an extension of Allegheny Riverfront Park and connect via water taxis to PNC Park and Heinz Field on the North Shore.

The competition site extends for 10 blocks, from 11th Street (at the eastern end of the convention center) to 21st Street. Its entire length is riverfront, and it is bounded on the south by Smallman Street.

All of the student teams started their financial planning with a presumed $40 million public investment. The Arizona team would spend its public funding on infrastructure improvements such as streets and the public plaza, which is designed to collect and absorb flood water even during hundred-year floods.

The proposals also had to include green design principles, and the Arizona team suggested operable windows in the loft-type buildings and the reuse of storm water to flush toilets.

The plan suggests retaining the wholesale produce use of the terminal building in the short term but recommended it be moved elsewhere in the Strip in the long run, to minimize truck traffic in the new residential district. The produce terminal then would be converted to retail use.

The goal of the second annual ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, which also awarded $2,000 to each of the 15 other finalists, is to generate creative solutions that are products of interdisciplinary teams in design and real estate programs.

All of the schemes are expected to be on view soon at either the Heinz History Center or Carnegie Museum of Art, with the dates to be announced.