It is good to see the development happening, I like the parking is behind the buildings. I hope they plan an urban style design for the facades, like the rowhouse style down the street on Grand Ave and St. Joe.
To be honest it looks like the kind of project that will leave me thinking "meh" at best or leaving me wish it was still vacant land at worst. Even with a good design and all masonry construction it's still not exciting, it looks like MLK will be seeing the backside of buildings (is that line implying fencing along MLK?) and the side streets will be seeing the sides and driveways. I'd like to see them go back to the drawing board on the site plan, buildings should be oriented to the streets, not to a parking lot. IMO this should be a non-negotiable for downtown, no more mistakes like Capitol Commons or Riverfront Towers.
I guess no privacy fence is a plus but with the massive setback from MLK and the lack of any sidewalks leading up to the doors from MLK I'm going to assume they're just meeting the letter of the zoning code in that regard. I'm just not a fan of this and I already had relatively low expectations for the site. IMO there's no excuse for this lazy of site planning.
As someone that has done a lot of work with site plans, those lines are most likely the right or way or property line and then the required setback by the city. Hard to tell looking at the small image on my phone, but I'm guessing based on the line types, locations and the dimension shown. It looks like they're keeping the buildings as close to MLK as permitted. Why there is this setback at MLK, I'm not sure. I'd like to see them right up to MLK for a more urban feel...
You would not want to live right up next to MLK on a ground floor. It's really why this site should have been zoned for something much more substantial. Between the noise level, and like Union Missionary Baptist, right in a dangerous curve, you don't want anything approximately single-family on a site like this. I grew up on the one-way section of Cedar, right is only three lanes wide. But the noise from cars going down the street was loud enough that you couldn't have your window open in the summer and watch television, or sit out on your porch. There is urban noise, and then there is living on a literal highway.
Anyway, setback requirements here are the average setback of the residential buildings on the blockface for single-family and duplexes, and 5 feet for everything else, so actually much better than before. And, yeah, those appear to be setback lines on the conceptualized site plan. People don't realize how much land MDOT owns along MLK since the Capitol Loop is a highway. The front property line is quite a ways in from the actual street and setbacks/build-tos are measured from the property line:
I can only critique what is presented, it would be unwise for a developer to show a conceptual site plan that is inferior to what they actually intend to build. I take them at their word that they intend to build something along the lines of what they have drawn up, it's not like it's some generic drawing, there was thought and effort put in.
Just for fun, I went into Sketchup to see what I could work up for illustrative purposes. The four blue buildings represent two-floor townhouses or flats just like their proposal, they would come in just slightly smaller at about 36k sq ft total vs roughly 40k sq ft in that site plan. I was able to squeeze in 75-80 parking spaces versus their 70. Then I added in the red building, which I would propose would be a small three-floor apartment building with the leasing office, community room, gym, etc on the first floor along with maybe a small commercial space. If they really wanted to stick to their parking ratios they could eliminate one of the blue buildings. My goal here was to have outward facing buildings with less of the street frontage occupied by driveways and the edges of parking lots. It only took an hour or so of minimal effort to think this up, and I have no education, training or professional experience with site planning. I expect better from people who make a living doing it.
Looks like the LEDC is helping get Stadium North across from Riverfront Apartments going. I think they eventually plan to buy up the northwest corner of the block, and I hope they do, because I'm not a fan of having the "butt" end of the property facing Cedar as it's shown:
Market-rate building:
Senior building:
The project includes 143 units between two 46-foot-tall, 4 story buildings.
Comments
Anyway, setback requirements here are the average setback of the residential buildings on the blockface for single-family and duplexes, and 5 feet for everything else, so actually much better than before. And, yeah, those appear to be setback lines on the conceptualized site plan. People don't realize how much land MDOT owns along MLK since the Capitol Loop is a highway. The front property line is quite a ways in from the actual street and setbacks/build-tos are measured from the property line:
But, yeah, again, this isn't the actual siteplan.
Just for fun, I went into Sketchup to see what I could work up for illustrative purposes. The four blue buildings represent two-floor townhouses or flats just like their proposal, they would come in just slightly smaller at about 36k sq ft total vs roughly 40k sq ft in that site plan. I was able to squeeze in 75-80 parking spaces versus their 70. Then I added in the red building, which I would propose would be a small three-floor apartment building with the leasing office, community room, gym, etc on the first floor along with maybe a small commercial space. If they really wanted to stick to their parking ratios they could eliminate one of the blue buildings. My goal here was to have outward facing buildings with less of the street frontage occupied by driveways and the edges of parking lots. It only took an hour or so of minimal effort to think this up, and I have no education, training or professional experience with site planning. I expect better from people who make a living doing it.
Market-rate building:
Senior building:
The project includes 143 units between two 46-foot-tall, 4 story buildings.