Yep. Hotel and office add some good variety to the existing, but the site plan is terrible. Looking at the elevations, it seems that there's quite a height disparity between Rio Salado and the property where the hotel would be built. That would make it more challenging to front Rio Salado, and given the location near a the freeway and away from Tempe's more urban core, it's not surprising they didn't put effort and $ into a street-fronting approach.
I am kind of surprised/annoyed, though, that there seems to be a wall and culdesac completely isolating this development from the existing Tempe Marketplace and from the rest of the undeveloped parcels. God forbid your hotel patrons or office workers might want to walk over for movies/shopping/food. Would be nice to see two or three pedestrian punch-outs in those walls so that people don't have to jump into their cars or double their walking distance. It would be under a half mile to walk to the Chipotle-area entrance to the TMP shop area if there was a ped punchout by the southern hotel, but much longer to get there by being forced to walk down to Rio Salado and back around. Not to mention then having to deal with all the car wash traffic and drivers entering the marketplace. At least with a punch-out, there would be less traffic to dodge and a much quicker walk in.
Oh, well. We're clearly not the target market for these hotels/offices. It's just a bummer to see them basically copying Mesa Riverview's suburban design instead of trying to make a better, more "Tempe" final product.
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Originally Posted by Jjs5056
I agree that the use is fine; but the site plan and materials are pretty lame. Again, it was obviously not going to be an urban mecca, but given that there are at least partially serious talks of a streetcar running down Rio one day, I just would've liked to see more of a pedestrian approach once inside the development (parking lots behind the buildings, or use of garages... the office uses over the retail, etc.). At the very least, something really contemporary to contrast TMP would've been neat architecturally.
What's proposed is nowhere near unexpected, though.
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