dnast

The new First Street Lofts sign is up. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me when I saw it. I thought they would've put the sign on the building, but it's attached to some scaffolding that just went up in front of the building. Also, it's kind of hard to read while driving, but I guess their potential buyers are probably people that actually get out and walk around downtown. I'll post a pic as soon as I get one.

Nice find, Allan! VeeFan, that work is probably being done for the Fifth Third Bank ATM that's going in Windmill Place's parking lot. I didn't realize they started working over there already.

Man, you? Jewerly World finally moved a few days ago. Now is the time where I get impatient for the 500 block project to get started. First Street Lofts and the LBC have been stagnant on the exterior and I'm getting bored And if you guys haven't been there yet, although smaller, the new Pages Bookstore is nice. I wish somebody would move into the old Aventis building and make 2nd St. more inviting. One day I'll be brave enough to visit Buckham Gallery next door with my empty wallet.

Heh. At least they're preserving the building for the time being.

Ha! You're right. I hope the old Economy building will have the shade of brown shown in the sketch. Speaking of sketches, here's a tiny one showing the side of First St. Lofts. I found it a month or so ago, but ended up forgetting about it because I was trying to get a larger one. It's going to be one classy-looking building.

That building looks nice. I wish I had the time to learn gmax or 3ds. BSP is a huge project to take on. Keep up the good work!

Uptown Developments is the developer. I don't know about the architects, but I'll take a look for any signage next time I'm down there. Oh yeah. Speaking of First Street Lofts, if you look just inside the Republic Bank, there's a nice-looking advertisement sign waiting to be put on the building. I'd love to see a few of those around downtown.

Al Kloss owns Daystar Development. He's also a part of the Uptown group, but I don't believe they are involved with the 352 Building. Nice find, pachuco. I didn't know they had a website.

Wow. That actually sounds very interesting, but I don't want to take this thread too far off topic. Our local daily paper in Flint finally got a new press up and running last year (the last one was over 50 years old). They never went into much detail about the press, though. I didn't know their environments had to be so delicately measured!

Al Kloss is the developer. I haven't heard anything in a while about the project. One newspaper said that it was getting 16 lofts, but now I believe the journalist confused it with the former Republic Bank building. Last I heard, Kloss is waiting for a ground floor tenant and will use the money to fix the elevators and refurbish the other floors as more tenants move in. I wouldn't my breath for that one.

I'm completely out of touch with said project, but is it really necessary to have that much precision??

Here's a quote from the long article about Williamson's first year in review: "...his vision for the next year: big road construction plans for Third Avenue between Kettering University and the University of Michigan-Flint, a new and more direct route from I-69 to Kettering, and neighborhood revitalization for the area near Hurley Medical Center." So it looks like these are high-priority for the mayor. I assume by "big" it means more than simply repaving the street. And I'm guessing they're talking about the Smith Village/Mainstreet project neighborhood. I'm interested in how they'll extend Chevrolet all the way to 69. Doesn't look like an easy task. Also, it looks like the city started replacing water and/or sewer lines downtown. You can see the construction off of Kearsley just west of Saginaw St.

Wow, those two condo conversions are beautiful! I'm normally for more affordable housing (not assisted), but high-income housing has to go somewhere. As much as I'd like to live there, I think you should have to spend some big bucks to live in places like those.

LOL. What can they possibly be doing?

I honestly don't like the brick. It's been like that for a long time. I'd probably like it a lot more with a fresh coat of black paint. In person, it looks like a really dark brown. Not that I don't like the building. The paint is my only problem, although I'd love it if J-London's (next door) eventually got a matching or a nice, contrasting facade improvement. I'm not a big fan of coffee, but I can't wait to be able to check the place out when it opens. I wouldn't mind living there, either. The huge windows on the upper floors are a plus. I bet that the size of those windows somewhat make up for how low the floors are. Edit: Just so my above comments don't sound redundant, note that I can be a very slow poster and typed that before I saw VeeFan's reply

Looks like Brown Sugar Cafe might be close to finally opening. It has been taking long enough for this little building.

I was wondering that since the first time I noticed the back was different. I would like to see how it looks on top. Maybe First St. Lofts will be giving tours soon

Pages Bookstore is going to be moving next door to Buckham Gallery on 2nd St. Also, I've been wanting to get a pic of it for a while but never took the time to do it. Here's how the back of the LBC looks now for those of you who haven't yet seen it. I was surprised they even paid much attention to it let alone getting it to look relatively nice.

Yeah I saw that too. To keep good terms with their contract, the complex still has to be complete by June 2006, so I'm not too worried. I'm not sure what they have left, but when I stopped by there about a month ago they had some great deals. From what the article said, it looks like we'll be losing a rare clothing store downtown for the time being. Hopefully they'll adjust the signage to let people know what's available at the new location. "The Mad Hatter" doesn't exactly sound like a place to grab some snacks and gamble on lottery tickets among other things. It's nice to know that they'll still have some hats available, but there's a new store on the same block as the Soggy Bottom and Big Al's that specializes in hats only. I always hope for the best, but it'll be amazing if they both get enough demand to keep things going. Non-sports hats don't seem to be in big demand these days.

Last time I went by there, Jewelry World was still open. I haven't been by there this week, so maybe they've started moving. I'd like to see something going on there soon. I saw the crane at Marion Hall, too. I'm wondering what they're doing, also. It's kind of like the mystery at the state office building. Yep, the LBC is looking nice. I want to see how the first floor of the modern facade will look. I haven't seen anybody working at the Republic building lately, either. It looks like they might be done removing materials. Hopefully, we'll see some reconstruction soon.

Well, Don Williamson has mentioned fixing up 3rd Ave. several times even before the riverfront plan was released. I'm assuming this is his next big clean-up project. I remember him once saying something like "wait until you see what we're doing with 3rd Ave." He always could just be talking about only repaving the street, though. I guess it's just wishful thinking on my part. I'm hoping they wouldn't waste money repaving the street just to tear some of it right back up for medians.

That's good news. It would be nice to have a fixed-up (or at least in better shape) Atwood possibly around the time 3rd Avenue gets its new streetscape. It's good to see Robaire supporting the stadium he played in as far back as middle school, too. It's good to have a few young Flint-native millionaires around. The city needs all the philanthropy it can get.

I need to start paying more attention. I didn't even notice a crane by Marion Hall, and barely glanced at Brown Sugar Caf

Lovely pair of buildings.

Oh wow. I was already laughing from the first half of Zack's reply before the pic even showed up. Then I read the caption... Let's just say I wouldn't be so sure of taking advice from a man with a collection of duct tape ties.