Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanTrance
I hope so. It seems like a lot of developments in SA are afraid to go slender, which would make them taller. I’m sure there are lots of engineering changes that can make that difficult, but it would make some projects look better if possible.
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Actually, San Antonio has a fair amount of slender hotels. Obviously, the older buildings are pretty bulky, but many of the newer hotels are pretty slender. The new Canopy hotel is really slim.
Office towers, though, like to be fatter. Companies prefer having as many employees on one floor as possible so they're grouped together. It's more difficult do that with smaller floorplates.
Anyway, on the height of this tower, 284 feet would still make it the tallest all residential building in San Antonio. The Grand Hyatt has higher residential spaces, and the Thompson Hotel & Residences tower will have some higher up, but not by much.
I think the design is ok. Yeah, it's not the most ritzy building, but really few residential buildings are. This building looks to me to resemble 90 percent of residential buildings even today. And it already is pretty slender. Residential buildings actually prefer to be more slender. It means fewer neighbors per floor which cuts down on neighbor noise. It just means they have to be taller, which makes them more expensive and means more elevators to carry the traffic throughout the building.