Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
I might be turning NIMBY as I age here, but if another out of town developer is just going to try to plop down a tower on a blank podium, collect their returns, and scram, then we have a problem. We might as well put this screwed up Aldermanic prerogative system to some sort of good use by extracting some good concessions here.
Now I know that the usual fuckface brigade will be out there whining about parking and congestion, but if they can be ignored, some sound design changes should be pursued. Any project that has 8 floors of blank podium simply must be declared unacceptable from the get go.
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The previous design was far superior as it had no parking and preserved 1 structural bay of depth on the existing 740 N Rush building, so different than a standard facadectomy.
The auto-centric minded people who also complain about traffic are the ones demanding these projects have more parking, and thus the proposal comes back with a podium. As BVictor mentioned, Reilly's office usually sees these proposals first and often forces changes before they are "ready for community input".
I'm betting coming back with a parking component and arguing including it drove up the cost is why we have a larger design on the table now.