Quote:
Originally Posted by Rooster slayer
Meh...Those 5 over 1 stick frame apartments remind me of how the the burbs build those "lifestyle centers"or pseudo downtowns. Much like these new town centers can be an approvement over the box in a lot type experience, these new apartments can be seen as an improvement over some existing types of housing in the proper area. Look what they have to work with, I guess.
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Yeah but the problem is a lot of places have decent historic environments to work with and you will be walking along a nice one to three story historic pedestrian street and BAM six stories by two blocks wide of hot garbage. Like this is by my sisters house in Denver, you go from beautiful old Pearl Street:
https://goo.gl/maps/TeJr6cHAR9m
To:
https://goo.gl/maps/kc8vGZqdPDU2
That second streetview isn't even the half of it, they've since filled in all the vacant lots in that area with gargantuan (like 500+ units in some cases) buildings. None of it is really urban with stupid first floor apartments that have tiny little patios lining major commercial streets. I mean who wants a 4x8' patio directly fronting a six lane commercial artery? Why isn't there retail there instead given the fact that they are adding like 2000 apartments in this location? So instead Pearl Street and other older commercial streets in the area are going to get mugged by jimmy johns and planet fitnesses because the giant new buildings that are a perfect opportunity to provide huge modern spaces for those types of inevitable users instead have highly undesirable ground floor units.
It just defies logic, I have to give Chicago credit that, despite our podium problems and ongoing preservation issues, we tend to build largely in the mold of what we already have. Sure a nice historic two flat might bite the dust, but it's replaced by a six flat that more or less imitates the same configurations we were building 100 years ago. We have had issues, for example, with ground floor parking or lack of retail on Belmont East of the highway, but I'm over here in Avondale trying to organize armed resistance to developers trying to turn our stretch of Belmont into a "quiet residential side street". We've actually been very successful at forcing retail into the ground floor of almost all new developments. Some recent examples like the Honey Baked Ham site tried to do all ground floor residential, but we forced them to incorporate 50% retail, same goes for the corner of St Louis and Belmont, they tried to do all ground floor residential and we made them do retail, but gave them B2 zoning so they could at least temporarily rent the storefront out as live-work so it wouldn't sit vacant waiting for a tenant. Unfortunately I think newer cities like Denver lack the inspiration to stage such planning minded pushback. There's not the institutional memory of how a good urban street should look because so many residents are transplants and there are so few existing examples of truly pedestrian oriented urban streets to inspire the new residents as streets like Clark and Milwaukee inspired me upon moving here.
I mean just look at how miserable Mississippi St in Denver in my second link is turning out. It could EASILY be a brand new urban pedestrian street, but instead you have a gross auto sewer for all eternity.
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