The Town of Shelburne ("the Town") is seeking proposals from qualified consultant teams to provide conceptual and preliminary design services for streetscape improvements and downtown beautification along Falls Road and the surrounding village core.

This is primarily a design commission. The Town is seeking a team led by professionals in landscape architecture, urban design, or streetscape design, supported by civil and traffic engineering expertise as needed. Proposals that treat this as a conventional roadway engineering project with design as a subordinate service are unlikely to be competitive.

The intended outcome of this contract is an ambitious long-range vision for the corridor and the Village Green, developed with strong public support, together with a phased implementation strategy that breaks that vision into short-, medium-, and long-term increments the Town can pursue as funding allows. Each increment must stand on its own as a coherent, buildable improvement.

Falls Road lies within the Shelburne Village Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, which is centered on the junction of U.S. Route 7 with Harbor Road and Falls Road. The corridor carries a mix of civic, commercial, and residential uses and functions as a primary pedestrian connection within the village.

Shelburne has been working toward improvements of this kind for nearly four decades. The 1988 Shelburne Village Plan articulated nine objectives for the village, among them reinforcing its visual and functional cohesiveness, improving pedestrian circulation, retaining its pedestrian scale and character, and reviving the Village Green as the focal point around which the village is connected. The 2006 Village Plan Update carried those objectives forward into specific streetscape recommendations. A 2008 design set advanced them to the edge of construction. None of this work has been built.

The Shelburne Town Plan continues to express these commitments, calling for the preservation of the Village's character and historic integrity, for a pedestrian-oriented and economically vital village core, and for public spaces that serve as gathering places for the community. The Unified Land Use Regulations reinforce the Village Core's mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented character. This project is the Town's effort to finally deliver on that long-standing intent, and to do so with a design ambitious enough to be worth the wait. 

Full RFP is linked here: https://shelburnevt.org/DocumentCenter/View/7816/Falls-Road-Project-RFP?bidId=