You don’t have to be a paying patron of Tiffany & Co. or Saks to enjoy the very best that Chevy Chase has to offer.

Just walk onto the plaza of The Shops At Wisconsin Place, and you’ll be in the middle of an award-winning, internationally recognized design—and it’s all yours to enjoy.

This past winter, the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) honored The Shops at Wisconsin Place with a Silver Design and Development award in its annual U.S. Design and Development Awards, which recognize “outstanding projects for excellence in the creation of new retail projects, and in the expansion or redevelopment of existing projects,” according to a statement issued by the ICSC and New England Development, the Newton, MA-based real estate firm that led the Wisconsin Place development.

Other partners participating in the award-winning design and development of Wisconsin Place were Boston Properties, a real estate investment trust; Archstone, owner and operator of apartment communities across the country; and Somerville, MA-based Arrowstreet, the master planner and retail architect for the project.

Wisconsin Place was over a decade in the making. In 1999, New England Development and its partners in the project submitted the first plan for the redesign of the five-block site, which formerly featured a Hecht’s department store, said David Gilmore, project manager for New England Development.

The original design didn’t look anything like the current design, Gilmore added.

The site—on the northwest corner of the intersection of Western and Wisconsin avenues—didn’t exactly lend itself to a straightforward design, thanks to its irregular outline, and there were many storefronts to be accommodated, Gilmore added.

To give the stores street frontage and to create an open public space, the planners pushed the development’s largest store—Bloomingdale’s—to the back of the site, and created an oval-like plaza in front of it, enabling many stores to be visible from the Wisconsin-Western intersection.

Wisconsin Place’s design precedents include the Piazza Navona (a former Roman stadium track) and the Piazza del Campidoglio (an irregularly-shaped piazza that Michelangelo 'cleaned up' in the 16th century with the help of a little perspective and architectural trickery), Gilmore added.

“Wisconsin Place is a vibrant, 1.1-million-square-foot, mixed-use development [with 432 rental apartments] that has brought new life to the site of a former department store,” according to a statement issued by the ICSC and New England Development.

“The development has clearly created a retail focus point for Chevy Chase and includes a commitment to integrate into the neighborhood by design,” the statement continued.

During the planning process, developers met repeatedly with nearby neighborhoods and with The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to ensure that the final product would integrate well with its surroundings.

One of the features of Wisconsin Place is the Wisconsin Place Community Recreation Center, which contains a full-size gym, community meeting rooms and exercise equipment. At 21,000 square feet, the center is nearly twice as big as zoning regulations required it to be, Gilmore pointed out.

Another feature is the artwork, which includes an obelisk-like fountain—the basin of which is lined with polished black granite tiles arranged in a fish scale-like pattern to keep the fountain interesting in the winter when the water is shut off, the sculpture outside of Whole Foods Market with the colorful W’s, and the V-shaped colored light tubes hanging from the ceiling of the arcade connecting the large plaza outside of Bloomingdale’s with the smaller plaza outside of P.F. Chang’s China Bistro. All of the sculptures were designed by local artist Athena Tacha.

Even the parking garage has an art to it. Its planners and architects “spent a lot of time on the garage … to make it user-friendly,” with plenty of way-finding elements and street signage inside the garage, Gilmore said.

“We worked hard to make that garage feel pretty welcoming,” using bright colors and spacing the columns out a little farther than usual, he added.

One element that the development’s architects wish they could have constructed differently: the barrel vault covering the arcade linking the Bloomingdale's plaza with the plaza outside of P.F. Chang’s.

Arrowstreet architect Brad Edgerly had wanted a glass covering for the arcade. Instead, fire regulations required the arcade to be covered with a mesh screen so that smoke could escape the arcade quickly, if necessary.

But, overall, the planners and architects are pleased with how the project turned out.

“The public spaces have worked very well as designed,” Gillmore said, noting that the plazas have hosted everything from fashion shows to sunbathing, with many dog walkers and coffee drinkers in between.