Main Street and a Repurposed Parking Lot: Crow's Feet Commons in Bend, Oregon

Bend, Oregon, May, 2015:  A sunny weekend in this central Oregon town revealed a peaceful Main Street filled with cafes and shops catering to the outdoors enthusiast.  There is a reverence here for its historical main street, and a surprise in the form of Crow's Feet Commons, a bit of public wayfinding to get from Main Street to the much loved Mirror Pond and Drake Park on the Deschutes River, seen in the Google Maps screenshot below.

Main Street
The right-sized road:  Slowing cars with road surface, angled parking, varied storefronts, sidewalk tables and street furniture like the kiosk shown below

The right-sized sidewalk:

Behind Main Street is the Deschutes River and Mirror Pond Park.  They've thought up a very creative way to get you there.

An alley runs parallel to Main Street, behind the preserved facades, which leads to an unusual coffee shop/bike store on a large circular plaza:

Crows Foot cafe with outdoor seating leading to a plaza known as Crow's Feet Commons:

Coffee.  Also beer.  Bikes.  Also skis.  In a historic building.

 A view of Mirror Pond and one of the Cascade Sisters peaks, and steps to get down to the park from the plaza.  The plaza is right-sized, with railings, historically appropriate lighting and stonework, ample benches and textured paving.

In this Google satellite image you can see the way the Commons has been created by borrowing from the existing parking lot land.  A redistribution of infrastructure from being wholly supportive of cars to sharing with bicycles and pedestrians--a completely repurposed parking lot.