dnast

Sweet. When/where did you get that?

The marquee on the Capitol Theatre was lit when I drove by today. It wasn't dark outside yet, so it was hard to tell how it'll look at night. I didn't have my camera with me... I never knew it, but the marquee alternates between showing "Capitol" and "Theatre", although if you didn't know the name of the place, you wouldn't be able to tell it's saying "theatre" until it's completely dark.

Heh, I never thought about the "Brown Sugar" in the name. All I knew is that it was going to be a coffee shop. I didn't even know about the wireless Internet (or maybe I just forgot). That project has been moving so slowly that it's been months since I've read anything about it.

Thanks Taurean. It's not often we hear "wow" and "Flint" in the same breath unless it's something negative. The windows were put in the Economy Building today. They're nice and big. I hope they still plan on doing something with the bricks. They should at least be painted. Here are a couple of so-so pics of the FIA. I did a drive-by, so I had to cut my car out of the photos, heh. For some reason, it's hard to me to really capture the building. I'm only warming up to the colors, but I love the difference the glass makes.

You could be right. It thought it seemed a lot more crowded than usual when I passed by there earlier in the day. I was just taking a quick look at the Land Bank Center while on my way somewhere, and didn't really pay attention to anything else, so I could've easily missed something like temporary scaffolding.

Actually, I think today there was just a meeting to plan for the demo. I took the picture a little after 5:00pm, but you can't see the platforms in that picture. They've been there for a couple of weeks now. You can see them in a picture I posted in this thread a few pages back. And the sign, I just think it's been there so long that you stopped noticing it. It's been up there since last year I was thinking the same thing about the signage. It's the perfect place for it. That'd be funny if that building was another fake facade Here's an old pic for anybody who doesn't remember what that part of the block looked like last summer:

I drove by there earlier today and they've put materials on the first floor of the brick side, and they were close to finishing filling in the gap near the roof, as well. It's prefab but still looks pretty good. In my opinion, this is the best facade improvement so far downtown. That little building is going to be a great addition. It's almost hard to imagine that being the same building that was the ugly Hughes & Hatcher. A few other things: - Workers are still removing materials from First St. Lofts. The building looked pretty good as it was, so I'm wondering how much better it can get. I can't wait to see what that'll look like. - The old Economy building is finally getting more noticable exterior work done. An overhang above the coming Brown Sugar Cafe storefront was being added on today. I wonder what their new target date is. - I noticed a couple more historical markers; One at the Masonic Temple and I can't remember where I saw the other... - Has anyone seen the Flint Institute of Art lately? I'm not sure how well the design will age. There are various sections all over the addition, each with different brightly colored, glossy brick walls. There's still a lot of work to be done, and I haven't been by the place on a sunny day in months, so hopefully it'll look better than what I got from my first impressions. Still, it already looks way better than it used to. - The Mad Hatter is closed. Hopefully Jewerly World will be moving soon so work can start on the Rowe building. Even though project was announced maybe 6 or so months ago, it seems like we've been waiting forever. Edit: I ended up taking a picture of the building on this glummy day. Lately, it's never sunny when I have time to go take photos.

Let me know when you find out. I remember they published something back in 2000 (I think) covering architecture around the city, but I wasn't so much into that stuff back then and never picked up a copy. I keep forgetting to mention this, but the church on Saginaw and Hamilton has a historical marker on it. I never noticed it before, so I assume it recently placed theree. And another this I keep forgetting is to ask if anyone has seen the blue thing (I don't know what to call it, lol) separating the north and south sections of the Land Bank Center? I'm not sure if I like it or not, but it does bring a little style downtown. That's the last thing you'd expect from a building owned by the government. But then, how many government-owned buildings have loft apartments?

I was thinking the same thing. The article I read just said it was "built in 1927", so there's a chance. I totally agree about researching Flint. Doing it online is almost impossible. I want to find the book "A Pictoral History of Flint". I'm hoping it will have dates for most of the significant building in the city. I'm not willing to just order it until I know, though. I might try to find something from the Flint chapter of the AIA, too.

Hmm...I'm not saying yours is wrong, but my source says 1927. Speaking of skateboard parks, I wonder how well SPARC is doing with bringing a skate park downtown. They have monthly meetings, but you never hear anything. If done correctly, and with the right location, it could be a nice draw since there aren't many skate parks in the Flint area and people come downtown to skate, anyway.

Look closer at the site name

I wrote a semi-long response yesterday, but I guess I never hit 'submit'... I don't know for sure about the Citizen's Bank building, but I from what I recall from old photos, I believe it was built in the 20's between the time the 352 and Mott Foundation buildings were built. As far as Genesee Towers, I have no idea if there are any offices inside. If so, they're probably just the offices of the owner. Unless things have changed, the city had prohibited the owner from leasing space in the building. When I saw walking around last Sunday, I saw cars in the parking structure portion, but the gate was locked. So I guess that doesn't help much either, lol. To answer an older question, some of those cars I saw were parked in the gap between the two sections of the building. LOL, VeeFan. It was worth a try. You could get one of those cheap disposable digital cameras

I vaguely recall seeing something like that. I'll have to pay more attention next time I'm downtown. Edit: I wasn't even looking for it, but if you go to www.theUncommonSense.com and look at the photo on the contact page; is that what you're talking about? The renderings on FlintArches.com are pretty old (to give you an idea of how old - that site was created to inform people of the fund-raising going on to get the arches, and the renderings were shown before that site was online). I'm pretty sure those were revealed to the public even before any of the current projects were announced. I believe they were just long-term ideas of what downtown could look like. The funny thing about those renderings is that, except for First St. Lofts, none of the buildings so far look like what was shown on the Future Flint renderings. The good thing is, in my opinion, the projects in reality all look better (well, we'll have to see about the Economy building).

Thanks. Yeah, that house-looking building just looks weird. I'm not sure what you mean about stained glass look, unless you're just talking about how the glass is tinted. If so, it looks okay on the Lunch Studio, but I think it takes away from Bailiwick's. The windows are so dark that it looks very uninviting and you can't tell whether the place is open or not. If I hadn't seen people going in and out of the place I would've thought it was closed down.

Thanks. The Economy building does seem to be taking a lot longer than expected. Hopefully they're getting a lot of work done on the inside. I believe they're redoing all the electrical and plumbing in the building, so that could be one reason. Now that you mention it, I remember some plans being mentioned for the old bookstore. They'll probably want to finish some of these other projects before they get to it. I guess I'll have to be patient.

Workers are removing the (marble?) siding of First St. Lofts. I'm not sure why, though. What's underneath looks like large, bland concrete blocks. I'm guessing they're going to replace the marble with whatever was there in the 20's. Here's a picture from Sunday. A lot more has been removed since then. Here's a shot of the Land Bank Center and a getaway van, also from Sunday. Lastly, here's a bad shot of the whole block. I had to turn the brightness way up. Hopefully there's something in the works for the old bookstore (with the carriage on it) and the "house" building so the block will be complete. (And yes there were actually people downtown on a Sunday )

Man, how big is your hard drive? I guess those photos do take up a lot of space when they're 1-2mb a piece before resizing, though.

Thanks a million! I was gonna have to look through about 300 CDs for that.

http://www.YouSendIt.com is your friend You could just send to yourself and post the link if you'd like. Even though the site doesn't say it, they'd allow probably 100 downloads of that file before it goes down. It'll be easier to share it that way.

The houses in the foreground of the last pic almost look like models. Nice shots! Keep it up.

Impressive. There are a lot of talented people on Flickr. I haven't been there in about two months, but I'm going start visiting again. There are a lot of great ideas and inspiration on that site.

LOL. I never noticed that about First St. Lofts. Is there a link to details about the new park on campus? I might add it to my website. By the way, does anyone know any details about the Flint Firefighters Historical Museum? I can't find much of anything on the Internet, but maybe somebody has something. I had some information about it last year, but I have no idea where I got it from...

You forgot Bailiwick, Halo Burger, and Big Al's, but right now there aren't too many either way. It's just that we have the building next to Ferris Furs; 2 in the Rowe building; one next to Paul's Pipe Shop, also using the empty lot next to that; one for the former Dale's Health Food building combined with the Baker's Drug store; and possibly a restaurant for the Land Bank Center (if they can't get a grocery) all planned or proposed right now. Other than that, at street level we have planned/under construction: 3 nightclubs and a coffee shop. And one of those nightclubs is just moving from one building to another. It the ratio of restaurants to everything else I'm worried about. That being said, I'd still take it over the downtown from 2 years ago. I believe the guy from the quote was talking about the building directly next to the Ferris Building. I don't think there's much work to do on the facade of the more decorative building, so hopefully we're right. I'd love to see the building with the arched windows occupied and cleaned up, though. It definitely deserves to be in use. I can't wait to see how it'll look, either! Is the park going to be east of the White Building? I honestly forgot about it.

That was a great read. I'd hate to be in his position for so many years. Working on a well thought-out plan and warning officials, but always being ignored has to be the worst. It must have been a great relief getting that off his chest. I wish he would've done that 3 years ago.

Thanks. I ended up driving by there before I saw your post. I tried going through the official Allan Downtown Flint Photo Index, myself, but I can't see your pictures at work. Anyway, I think I read about this building getting a new facade. I remember a statement like "Flint City T-Shirts and the building next to it are getting facade improvments." Both of those could really use one. I know it's really too early to say this, but I hope downtown doesn't get oversaturated with restaurants. I like to eat, but I don't want Flint to be a Frankenmuth clone. That said, we're not close to having too many restaurants even planned yet; it just seems like that's almost exclusively what downtown's developers and landlords are targeting now.