I saw an interview with the developer who is very excited about buying City Hall and turning it into a first-class hotel. He is the same developer who had been wanting to develop the City Hall for the former mayor and seemed very much into getting the project going. I was a little surprised to hear that, as it has been years since the plan was first brought up. It all sounds good; I hope some council person does not decide to screw this up.
I was bored and started messing with my old Sketchup model of downtown, I wanted to add some of the new proposals but mostly wanted to visualize how the new block across from the CATA station might look with the new City Hall and apartments (and possibly parking), so I created a couple massings of possible layouts.
The new City Hall is in blue at the SW corner of Kalamazoo & Cherry, parking ramp in yellow, LHC apartments in purple, pedestrian plaza in green and ready-to-develop land in orange. In both versions the City Hall are about 80k-90k sq ft or so and 7-8 floors, the ramp would be roughly 600-800 spaces and the LHC apartment building would be around 100k sq ft. In the model with the apartment build wrapped around (preferable imo) the ramp the LHC apartments would be 8 floors instead of 5. The idea of building the relatively large ramp is to supply parking for future developments in the area so they will not need on-site parking.
Anyways, I did this to amuse myself and figured I'd share....
Nice to see the massing of these projects, thanks for that. The one thing that comes to mind for the first housing concept is that the corridors are going to most likely be double loaded, and I'm not sure units facing the parking structure are desirable or even feasible (for many reasons). I love the idea of wrapping it, but its more likely few floors of parking underneath the whole thing and house on top. Or, something like the second option.
What depth did you use for the "legs" of the housing building? The inside corners on housing structures can also be difficult to work with. It will likely end up just a rectangle...which is unfortunate.
The standalone apartment building is shown as 65' wide while the parking ramp wraparound is 40 ft deep. I've seen apartments built like that before, Grand Rapids had a similar apartment building/parking ramp built (38 Commerce Ave SW) maybe 10 years ago. I haven't been in one but I assume that they typically have a corridor that parallels the parking ramp with units on only one side. One advantage of this sort of setup is that the apartments and ramp can share their stairs/elevators. I don't know how it would work between the city owning the parking ramp and LHC owning the apartments, but if they could come to an agreement I'd love to see something like that.
That can work, but biggest bang for your buck will have a corridor down the center and units on both sides. Developers generally want that and have a depth of 120-140. So your scenario could work but only if they're willing to be less efficient with it. With the size of the site, I'm not sure they'll be willing to. You never know though. I'd really prefer what you proposed. I really hate a parking garage right at street level unless it's wells screened, which is something I've noticed with newer parking garages in GR.
Sharing the levels between the two is nice, if you can get the clearances to work out, which also can be tricky. I'm not sure on the separate ownership but I only imagine that would complicate things.
I'm just happy to see something happen at this site. Fingers crossed it happens.
Which dimension are you talking about for the 120'-140' depth? All the recent apartment builds I measured in the stadium district, downtown and on Michigan Ave have a depth/width/short axis dimension of 55'-70'.
I know that the apartments wrapping the parking garage is unlikely. I know it'd require the ramp having higher than normal floor-to-floor heights, negates the possibility of a stick built structure and would require the city and LHC to work out a potentially complex agreement. I'd really like the (assumedly inevitable) parking structure on this site hidden from the street.
I also couldn't be happier to having most of a block of surface parking likely going away.
Sorry for the delay in responding. I was thinking it was the short axis that was 120', but now I'm second guessing myself for a double loaded, residential corridor. I'm going to have to look at some past projects, and maybe a coworker that's done a lot of them in their past. The 60-70' for the short axis is seeming reasonable when I break it down. All I know is that there is a short axis dimension that is the most efficient and cost effective for developers...just might be confusing what that number is. If you're measuring 55-70', it must be working here. I'm probably just mistaken.
No worries, I appreciate the insight nonetheless. I just went around measuring a bunch of the modern 5 over 1 style buildings on Google Maps and all came up in that range. For the dimension of the apartments wrapped around the garage I just measured the one in GR that I remembered seeing from lurking on the GR UrbanPlanet forum years ago, I'd love to know just how rare those types of setups are.
Comments
The new City Hall is in blue at the SW corner of Kalamazoo & Cherry, parking ramp in yellow, LHC apartments in purple, pedestrian plaza in green and ready-to-develop land in orange. In both versions the City Hall are about 80k-90k sq ft or so and 7-8 floors, the ramp would be roughly 600-800 spaces and the LHC apartment building would be around 100k sq ft. In the model with the apartment build wrapped around (preferable imo) the ramp the LHC apartments would be 8 floors instead of 5. The idea of building the relatively large ramp is to supply parking for future developments in the area so they will not need on-site parking.
Anyways, I did this to amuse myself and figured I'd share....
What depth did you use for the "legs" of the housing building? The inside corners on housing structures can also be difficult to work with. It will likely end up just a rectangle...which is unfortunate.
Sharing the levels between the two is nice, if you can get the clearances to work out, which also can be tricky. I'm not sure on the separate ownership but I only imagine that would complicate things.
I'm just happy to see something happen at this site. Fingers crossed it happens.
I know that the apartments wrapping the parking garage is unlikely. I know it'd require the ramp having higher than normal floor-to-floor heights, negates the possibility of a stick built structure and would require the city and LHC to work out a potentially complex agreement. I'd really like the (assumedly inevitable) parking structure on this site hidden from the street.
I also couldn't be happier to having most of a block of surface parking likely going away.