Citadel Shopping Center
Location Commerce, CA, USA | Client Trammel Crow Company | Size 17 hectares | Awards American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award, 1991 | Status Completed 1991 | Tags Corporate and Commercial
Martha Schwartz designed the landscape for the 35-acre Citadel, a mixed-use development which hosts retail, an office park, and a 201-room hotel.
The masterplan created a main entry in the front wall, opening the interior to public view. In front of the entrance, a grand palm-lined avenue bisects the site, separating the retail park from the office and hotel. 250 date palms are planted in rows which separate traffic and pedestrian lanes. They are ringed with white concrete bases which resemble inflated tire inner tubes, making them appear to float above the checkerboard surface. The red and grey patterned plaza, made from a series of colored concrete rectangular pavers, seems to slide under the plantings and other plaza features.
“We felt it was vital to create a strong image, an immediate identity. Creating a clear image signals the old building’s fresh incarnation, and conjures up a truly urban sense of place.”
Martha Schwartz
The hotel and entrance to the retail court are on a cross axis framed by buildings and palms. The retail court recreates a Middle Eastern bazaar — a space of shade trees and paths, awnings and water. A formal avenue of flowering trees connects the central space to the hotel.
A road at right angles to the grant avenue leads to the parking area at the rear of the site.
The parking area is designed to recall the agricultural groves of Southern California and the Mediterranean. Rows of small-leaved, drought-resistant olive trees contrast dramatically with the green palm oasis.
The site in California was originally a factory, designed in the 1928 for the Samson Tire and Rubber Company to resemble an Assyrian palace. It was sold to the Uniroyal Tire and Rubber Plant, until it closed in 1978. The City of Commerce bought the site in 1983 and transformed it into the mix of stores, offices and hotel, preserving the decorated Assyrian-style temple and bas relief front walls.
The Los Angeles Times archive website has more information, and Paul Spizzeri has collected newspaper clippings for a fascinating history of the Goodrich Tire Plant site.
