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Cedar and Broad update
04/21/2008 3:46 PM by John M
There will be a meeting tonight on the project proposed for Cedar and Broad. The meeting will be held 5:30-6:30PM @ Sheba Ethiopian Restaurant (formerly Wildcats).
Currently:
TAGGED: 305 North 18th Street
Just an aside but very nice design work on these sites, john. Much appreciated and admired by me.
Thanks, it is good to get the nice words ’cause sometimes the behind the scenes bullshit makes me wonder why I do this.
The page layout & stuff has certainly evolved over the past 3 1/2 years.
Any updates?
The big change is that it looks like they’ve opened it up so that traffic can also enter/exit on 18th Street. This had come up at the original meeting.
There was a neat rendering shown of what the building would look like from Jefferson Park. I should be getting a copy of that image maybe today & I’ll put that up here when I have it.
whoa… looks good. Thanks for posting the picks.
That’s an excellent conversion of a sea of asphalt into a more efficient use of space. That area is really making quite a transformation!
I think it will look great if it goes through. It doesn’t look like it is going to obstruct the view from Jefferson Park. I like it.
That looks great! I wish the developer the best of luck. It’s unfortunate that McDonalds refused to play along so that the entire block could have been redeveloped with a consistant building design.
Hey, the view shed of the McDonalds is obscured! How the Micky D’s ever hope to gain historic view shed status if it gets obscured so early in its life.
Where will all of those MCV employees park now?
It would be nice to see a Green Roof like the ones in Chicago on this development instead of green paint. Catching rain water in this location would be important –remember Gaston?
The roof definitely needs to be addressed, especially since the view would be so prominent.
But let’s looked at the bigger picture here, traffic is already a bear in the morning without this big building. Developers should be somehow required to address public transit issues, or pay additional fees to improve the roads before building a structure only adds to the problem. The other poster was right, where are all of the MCV motors going to park now?
Parks spoke at length about the plans for the roof. It is typical for large projects these days to put all of the AC compressors etc on the roof. Here, they are installing walls around the hardware so that it won’t be visible from any direction. If I recollect, they would like to put a pool on the roof. They did this at American Tobacco and it is pretty cool.
The commuter parking *is* an issue, but whose? MCV? The developers are building parking for their residents into the lot/structure.
Green Roof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof
There was also a thread a while back where people suggested making that area “safer” for those who are taking advantage of the free MCV/construction parking below the park. Has anything come from that? I’ve seen no progress in the putting in of sidewalks. I also wonder how much of that overflow is a result of lack of MCV parking vs. lack of parking fees in our area.
People keep creeping farther up the hill on Cedar, so far up sometimes that the uphill lane is almost totally obscured around the first corner, causing drivers coming up the hill to veer into the oncoming lane, which just isn’t safe. I hope this new development doesn’t turn that area into Fan-like parking chaos.
this is a great thing for the area and the currently shabby East Broad corridor. I would encourage MCV parkers to ride the bus or buy a bike. Gas is too expensive anyways. As for the roof, it doesn’t seem to bad from the picture I have seen.
I am glad they are developing the area. Quite encouraging BUT it still has that cheap pre-fab fake old building look. Not taking architecture cues from actual buildings constructed lets say, in the early 20th century (1900-1920). I am tired of seeing these fakes go up (ala VCU campus). The only building I have seen go up lately that has any significant quality to it is the new $200+ million dollar Snead Hall building at Main and Belvidere.
Eric
By Green Roof, I’m talking about having gardens and vegetation on the roof like they have in Chicago to conserve water and energy, and to improve the air quality. During Gaston the bottom flooded because of water run off and poor drainage. A Green Roof captures water and makes use of it instead of dumping it into the sewer. Now think of the hardcore pollution produced on 95 north and south, 64 east and west, and the RMA all tangled above shockoe bottom valley and the heavily congested Broad St…you would need an amazon jungle to eat up that amount of carbon dioxide.
I agree with Eric on the fake old building look and it is funny the way the architects slap a little grey steel here and there thinking they’re tying the old in with the new. Taking materials from each architectural period in history and simply patching them together does not make for good architecture.
Now I like that the building butts up to the sidewalk. For example, although I like the architecture of the Children’s Museum, I hate the ugly asphalt out front jammed with fat vans and SUV hogs.
Thanks Gray for agreeing on the fake architecture. The last “real” building that tried to replicate an old one that I’ve seen constructed from scratch in the past 10 years is the CVS building at 25th and Main. It used REAL bricks, took architecture hints from older buildings, and doesn’t look so out of place. Everything going up lately looks too perfect (stamped out in presses) , too plastic. No real stone work, no carvings or embellishments like when you had stone masons, pseudo rooflines, and they also look too industrial. I rank their design quality in line with a double-wide trailer! No character to fit into a historic neighborhood.
Eric
I hate this…as a duplex owner on the Hill, I don’t need anymore living facilities built to take away my client base. Who’s gonna rent from me now with all these newer “fancier” places? 🙁
Dave
I wouldn’t worry. There will always be people who do NOT want to live in a large apartment building b/c of various issues.