Quote:
Originally Posted by Jjs5056
That building looks fantastic! Very similar to the Starbucks on Playa del Norte, and is very close to the street.
Took a ride through Tempe... Argo is making progress but hasn't completed a full floor yet. I hope some development occurs along the lake near TCA as I fear the retail component of Argo will struggle without any other retail in the immediate vicinity to complement. I also think it just makes sense to have retail close to TCA. Headed east and though I couldn't navigate all the roads because of the construction, I was able to see a few things. Manzanita's upgrades look great- they've added a lot of glass to the facade, though the glass in the main part behind the triangles looks a bit odd so I am hoping it is just unfinished. The Hub looks great from the ground level- so much retail space (that is doing well from a leasing perspective) with beautiful ground-ceiling glass windows. There is also a ton of retail space at the Marriott- any news for those spaces? I hope the garage adjacent continues to fill up with more than Yoga for the People. Unfortunately, like The Hub, the Marriott is pretty hideous above the first few floors. Very cheap facade materials, and the colors are vile- digesting blend of typical Arizona earth tones.
Finally, I rode down Apache and it is just incredible how much that corridor has transformed. I wish some of the newer ASU construction (Barrett Honors and Villas at Vista) incorporated a few spaces for retail. Seems like a wasted opportunity to not build off the successful Vista del Sol. Regardless, it's a very urban-feeling street with all of this dense development with a great mix of uses, from hotel to dorms to apartments to recreation centers, police stations, and more. The SRC expands aol the way to Apache now- will there be entrances from the street? Looks amazing!
A little disappointed in the State Farm designs. Shade is still lacking, and the garages are just monstrous. Wrapped in retail/residential or not, they are still huge and take up a large portion of the land, destroying the pedestrian scale of the development and making it more difficult for these pedestrians to easily interact with the lake, the retail, Rio Salado, etc. Visually, they make the tall structures look thick and stumpy... The Lofts next-door show much cleaner projects look with underground parking. A shame how much space from Mil to Rural will be wasted on parking,
Overall, a huge win for Tempe and Town Lake! I have to imagine that there will be extra demand for some dense, workforce residential nearby- a tower adjacent to Us Airways would be great.
And, not that there was any doubt in my mind that it was the better choice, the Rio route for the streetcar has to pick up some momentum with this development breaking ground.
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This is the second comment against the garages, so I feel like I have to address this issue. How are they hideous? The only way you can tell they are a garage, is by seeing it from either a plane or atop Hayden Butte. There is a great disdain towards parking garages in this blog, and almost every project that includes one is chastised. A great example of this is Roosevelt Point. Their garage occupies a minimal footprint, is flanked by retail, and they covered it with an interesting arrangement of metal louvers to not make it look like one of those horrid concrete boxes that we are used to; yet for many it is still a travesty!!! I am sorry, but Phoenix and Tempe are nowhere near being auto independent. Even most of us that would prefer not to drive have to for many reasons. Yes, light rail helps a lot, but many of us can't always chose to use it for everything. For example, if I need to drop of a set of plans for Glendale, or Scottsdale, or even Mesa, I have to drive. The idea that huge projects can either have no parking or have it all underground is ludicrous. I am a huge advocate for pedestrian developments, but the reality is that for those environments to exist, parking garages are a necessity.
Now focusing back to these garages. The project needs the parking because most of the employees will be coming from elsewhere. Even if they all wanted to move to Tempe, there isn't enough housing walking distance from here to house all of them. The garages are a necessity, not a whim.
Underground was not an option. First off, the cost would be astronomical, and it would probably end up taking money away from something up top. The lake creates a big obstacle for underground parking, since the Army Core of Engineers have very very very strict guidelines. If you notice, TCA is basically elevated on a podium facing the lake, this is because for the ACE, this area is a flood-zone, and therefore any development must be above it. If Marina Heights went underground, they would have had to build huge retention walls, as well as install extremely expensive flood mitigating mechanisms, and had to deal with the slow bureaucratic process. All this added to what already is an expensive process.
Walkability is about what is experienced at the pedestrian level, and what pedestrians will experience in this project is tons of retail, the entire bottom level is occupied by uses other than parking. So even if it is a large parking structure, it doesn't become a dead block. Furthermore, the garage is actually covered by an interesting looking facade, so even if you look up, you won't be looking at the cars. And even beyond that, the structure for the parking garage is not just used for parking, but both garages also have two of the towers set atop them. This is not a garage, it is a mix-use building.
I truly believe that when finished, this will probably be the best looking parking garage in the entire valley, and the reality is that most people will probably never know that it is a garage.
As for the issue of shade. The renderings actually show that the central spaces will actually be pretty shaded. Buildings flanking the south, east and west sides should block a lot of the sun most of the day; plus, the renderings show a lot of trees being panted. I'd argue that the design provides a pretty comfortable space. Now, along the lake is a different issue, but that is part of the city of Tempe, not of this development.
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