Quote:
Originally Posted by LMich
I was talking more about the Woodward side of this development. Whereas the Professional Plaza ran the block creating a streetwall, this will leave some wholes in the streetwall. It seems that you'd want to retain the streetwall on Woodward and tuck the garage on the back of the site. This seems like the orientation of the new building a downgrade from an urban perspective given what's currently on the site. We're looking southeast in that rendering, right? I see a lot of unsued space on Woodward, and I'm hoping it's not a parking lot or lawn, but what else could it be?
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Yea it could be that. But on the one hand, that might be there for future development. At worst it could be a parking lot for a strip mall, but I don't think that's the case.
I actually have a big gripe with developments that take up the whole streetwall and leave a lot of space behind them (or fills it with a parking garage). It's more old school to build perpendicular to the street than it is to build along it unless it's needed.
For example:
IMO, the Ellington and the office building across from it in the first picture waste a lot of space. However, it can be forgiven since they sit on the corner. Though even in that respect, they still could have been built better. Both of them could have been more perpendicular to Woodward. Especially since the office building makes Parson's street entirely less interesting because of the parking garage. Even if the garage fronted Woodward, it wouldn't take up much streetwall space if built perpendicular to Woodward a la
this parking garage fronting John R.
If you see in the lower picture, the old school apartments are built away from the street towards the center of the block. This fills up much more of the block than if you just had one apartment filling the streetwall entirely. Another plus is that there's less risk for overbuilding. While it does leave holes in the streetwall, they're not
huge holes. You could very easily build a slender apartment building on any of those empty lots.
That could also mean that you don't have to spend so much money on filling space (in turn, needing less money for financing), and instead you can build market-rate prices while also spending a little more on aesthetics. While it's a slower method of development, I think it's a better method.
I would hate to see something like this filling up Detroit's blocks.
I dunno, those just don't seem very human-scaled to me.
They also look kind of ugly and cheap from the street. I think Detroit would do well to focus on quality instead of quantity and keep things at a human scale.