The City of Santa Monica engaged JWA to transform the outdoor environment at the Big Blue Bus maintenance yard on Colorado Boulevard, adjacent to downtown Santa Monica. The nearly two-block campus — home to the transit agency’s entire physical plant — was largely given over to concrete and bus parking, leaving staff with few usable outdoor spaces during breaks.
Working with Stephen Billings Landscape Architecture, the project created a pocket park at the yard’s Administration Building and activated its large but underutilized outdoor decks. The interventions introduced shaded seating, planting, and defined areas for dining and respite — addressing the single most consistent finding from an employee survey conducted as part of the broader campus planning study: that staff wanted access to the outdoors but felt constrained by the lack of comfortable places to be.
The greening project was the first phase of a larger effort by the City to improve employee amenities across the campus. JWA has since been engaged to design the driver ready room and outdoor sports court as the city implements the planning study’s recommendations.
Landscape: Stephen Billings Landscape Architecture | Plumbing: Lam+Tea Engineering
