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NOTEBOOK: Nothing pedestrian about paseo at Gray’s Station, or is it?

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Hubbell Realty Co. is continuing its redevelopment march across 75 acres of former industrial and railroad land south Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.
It is dropping some nifty words along the way as it presents plans for Gray’s Station, a unique area that will add a new neighborhood on the south side of downtown Des Moines with a mix of housing types that could be home to 2,000 residents when it is completed.

The latest addition is a 45-unit townhome project called Fusion that will flank a new street — Southwest 12th Street — just south of recently completed Tuttle Street. Work should start soon and be completed next year. Hubbell’s Linc apartments are under construction at the moment and provide a gateway to Gray’s Station off of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. Linc should be finished in 2020. Soon to follow are for-sale townhomes that will be priced from the $300,000s to the $800,000s.

And south of the all that residential construction, a bridge is under construction across the Raccoon River that will provide a path to Gray’s Lake Park and, via a tunnel under Fleur Drive, to Water Works Park. The bridge will cross at a wetland that is being constructed on the north side of the river.

Hubbell has been at this naming game a long time and has dropped some dandies — some might say doozies — on the landscape, typically the names of developments.

Now Hubbell also is introducing a few words that haven’t been part of the everyday language of designers and developers, at least not in Greater Des Moines. These don’t refer to the living quarters.

Let’s start with paseo, word of Spanish origin that refers to a long, peaceful, possibly romantic stroll along an avenue or a boulevard. (During the Spanish Civil War, the word had a darker tone, referring to the path of demise taken by opponents of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his supporters.) In Gray’s Station, it refers to a boulevard that is predominantly grass with a touch of concrete. There will be a time when you can stroll the paseo to the Gray’s Station wetland, saying howdy to your neighbors along the way.

Paseo certainly sounds pastoral; cycle track does not, but it refers to something that is perfectly harmless and is intended to keep bicycle riders out of harm’s way. In other words, it is a dedicated bike lane.

Hubbell spokeswoman Claire Brehmer, who says if you want to call a cycle track a bike lane, call it a bike lane, pointed out that the developer is using terms that are new to it, if not the rest of the development community.

Urban neighborhood, for example, does have a better ring than master-planned community. We’re going to hear a lot about pocket parks at Gray’s Station “that aren’t big in footprint but still give some space for kids to play.”

A few of these terms have popped up in other development projects and are in wide use across the nation.

Hubbell is blogging about some of these terms and concepts at https://graysstation.com/blog.

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