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We create award-winning municipal planning projects that are changing the way cities think about entitlement, permitting, and housing policy. Together with our partners at Pattern Zones Co, we solve tough problems around issues like affordability and neighborhood infill by placing design at the center of the conversation. 

CLAREMORE, OK

Most planning efforts don’t deliver what they promise. MBL’s Pattern Zoning project in Claremore Oklahoma offers a roadmap for how to change that.

With almost a dozen new buildings completed in downtown and scores more on the way, MBL’s Pattern Zone in Claremore Oklahoma is re-writing the story of missing middle infill in small towns.

A town of just 19,000 people, Claremore has for decades suffered from a lack of investment in their historic downtown. Residential developers had largely turned their back on downtown, opting instead for the green fields of Claremore’s outskirts.

In just a few short years since the Pattern Zone was first implemented in 2021, Claremore has flipped that script. local developers now understand the benefits of building in a urban form, and they are increasingly turning back to downtown, in part because of the convenience the program brings to infill development.

With the success of the program, the City of Claremore is eager to expand it. As President of both MBL Planning and Pattern Zones Co, Matthew Hoffman oversees a partnership that will bring dozens more pre-approved buildings to the city in 2024 via a web-connected portal.

CITY OF BRYAN

MBL led a cross-disciplinary planning team in the development of a comprehensive vision for over two square miles, covering several distinct districts between the Bryan Texas downtown, and Texas A&M University. The plan, which won a national award from the Congress for the New Urbanism in 2020, is both vast in scope and incredibly detailed in its recommendations. Deliverables included definition of and detailed policy direction for five different “experience districts”, along with preliminary designs for catalytic projects and capital improvements within each district. As a preliminary step, the team completed a thorough market economics and demographics study. Following four large public meetings, and months of works sessions with stakeholders, the team proposed a host of new zoning and development ordinances for the area, which were officially adopted in May of 2020.Among several innovative ideas, the Midtown Pattern Zone stands out. This first-in-the-nation zoning and economic development tool dramatically lowers barriers to missing middle housing by pre-approving complete building designs on a parcel-by-parcel basis within the study area. The process will encourage a new class of would be developers to actively engage in the improvement of their own neighborhoods by completely eliminating some of the most time-consuming, costly, and confusing parts of the design and entitlement process.