Quote:
Originally Posted by TRex
They can start by hiring i-215.
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Please, no. I'm an uneducated dummy who has never taken a single architecture class in my life (a few unaccredited urban planning classes).
But if
even somebody as uneducated as me sees gaping problems in their plan, then SEG is in real trouble. They need to be bringing in an actual developer of this stuff to partner.
Even AEG, who own arenas in Los Angeles, Berlin, Hamburg, London, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Oakland, San Diego, Huston, and Dallas... were smart enough to bring in an outside firm to actually come up with L.A. Live. They didn't sketch it up themselves.
https://www.callisonrtkl.com/projects/la-live/
Renderings from the LA times (before planning commission approval, 2001):
The Draft Environmental Impact Report (required in CA, but only required in Utah if there are federal funds involved, which there won't be). This first graphic shows the way the project would interact with the existing street grid:
This is the level of concept SEG needed to be at before the legislature started throwing conceptual money at them. (Granted, I now understand it was the city approaching SEG and not the other way 'round, but still...):
A reasonably concrete concept that a city council, planning commission, and adjacent property owners can work with to come up with a consensus project that works.
LA's planning commission voted 11-0 in favor of AEG's LA Live. Partly because AEG hired professions and
did their homework before presenting in front of the class, so to speak. They'd spent a year or more getting all the stakeholders on board and massaging their designs down to specific buildings with specific purposes.
Compare this with what SEG gave us:
They just whipped something out with Microsoft Paint and just assumed SLC would be on board with a half-cooked casserole that's really just a pan of cheese and ketchup and no noodles.
For SEG to succeed they need to:
1. Hire professionals. They won't be cheap. They won't be headquartered in Utah. They might not even be based out of the U.S.
2. Listen to the professionals.
3. Take early drafts to stakeholders (adjacent property owners, the Chamber of Commerce, etc.) directly in closed-door meetings. Let the professionals lead these meetings. They won't be cheap. Let the professionals tweak the designs.
4. Work with the planning commission in a preparatory (but ethically legal "closed door" way) to address concerns. Let the professionals lead these meetings. They won't be cheap, blah, blah, blah...
5. When you have a bulletproof concept that has all the stakeholders and city officials feeling good about it,
then release a Twitter post to the public showing it off!
6. Then listen to the reasonable public feedback. Let the professionals conduct these meetings (similar to what
Disney did in Anaheim). Adjust the plans to meet community feedback within the bounds of previous constraints from stakeholders.
7.
After all this work... then present to the planning commission. It'll pass unanimously or nearly unanimously.
SEG are rookies. Until they bring in pros to help them, I'm worried this project is in real trouble. If they are struggling this much with the PLANNING part of the process, what do they expect the ENGINEERING and PROJECT MANAGEMENT part of the process to be like?