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Taking a second look, much of their "good" stuff seems to be aping existing designs on the campus. The Bed-Stuyvesant project I thought was nice was actually the original building. Oops. They just did the interior and a prison-grade addition. With U of M, the were doing the best they could to knock off the great Albert Kahn. They're nice buildings, but rather sterile. Spangler center at Harvard was also a knock off of existing buildings, but it looks pretty good. It still suffers from being plain and slightly out of proportion on a closer glance. I think much of the problem with a lot of these things is that the brickwork just doesn't look quite right. It ends up very flat and plain with no texture and with windows that are not adequately set back into the facade. Like GVSU and the RDV building, the design is good, but the execution and attention to detail isn't there. Hopefully they can get them both right in this project. Can it really be that tough to make a traditionally styled building look like it was actually built out of brick instead of faced in it? I think that's why many of these things look a little dissonant. The brick is not a structural component, but the eye wants to believe it is. When the architect fails to treat it in the manner of a structural component, the building doesn't feel quite right.

From what I was told, it was going to be $1000 or more for a two unit, and parking was going to be less than one spot per unit. If that isn't accurate, I would happily stand corrected. What zoning doesn't see is that the 5/3 lot is used by Bombay Cuisine for parking, and unless Carlton can accommodate a lot of cars, there is no on street parking left to use. As an alternative, perhaps Uptown Ministries could be talked out of one of its empty lots, unless they're just being held for ransom. Even on Sunday they sit empty. That spot on Wealthy could be turned into a great mixed-use development with plenty of resident AND church parking on the Atlas lot.

Some of their academic stuff is actually incredibly attractive for "modern" designs. It's hard to tell if they got the minor details right, but the University of Kentucky Law School and the Harvard business school building are great in photos, as is the charter school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and many of the other designs. It's not just neo-traditional architecture, it's actually traditional architecture done right on the macro level. That is actually much more difficult to do than many architects would care to admit. Getting the details right is another matter (as the RDV HQ attests to), but all in all, this outfit certainly seems to have the capability to do nice work. But, then there's stuff like the Greenspun Hall, Park Center for Business, and the Smeal College of Business Adminstration, all of which are so heinously ugly that they are almost certain to have a very short shelf life. The "Green Grand Rapids" trend has me worried that we'll end with something that attempts to look "distinctive" and just winds up another GRAM disaster.

If GVSU wants to do something really spectacular, it will re-use the existing building and renovate it into classroom and housing space. As a warehouse, it's built like a bunker and wide open for remodeling. I'm sure it could even accomodate car parking on the first floor with fairly minor effort. Of course, GVSU being GVSU (and this being Grand Rapids), a new "green" building will probably be built which fails entirely to account for the significant cost of destroying and removing an existing building and replacing with new construction.

This one needed to die a swift death. The apartments were grossly overpriced with inadequate parking. Richard Terrace is already a parking nightmare, and with only 1.5 spots per 2 bedroom apartment, this development threatened to turn a bad situation into something entirely unmanageable. It's a fairly narrow street with a restaurant at one end, and multiple unit rentals with minimal off-street parking. The whole concept of a "terrace" was to cram lots of really big houses onto really narrow lots. There were never many areas like this developed in Grand Rapids, and when they become rental splits, the problems multiply like wildfire. Similar problems exist on the terraces in the north end of Heritage Hill. Here, Carlton could have handled some of the excess, but not much. I'm not normally one to angle for more parking lots, but when it's a new building on a bulldozer site, I don't have a lot of sympathy. Bazzani has done a lot of great things for Eastown, but this project wasn't going to be one of them. That said, much of it probably wasn't his fault. The city has ridiculous requirements for lawn area in the City Code which are more suited to the 'burbs than a dense urban environment. Putting in off street parking for a typical existing two family or a new multifamily development is a pain in the neck because the city wants insane amounts of grass planted everywhere. They've zoned and written a code for the suburban environment with sprawling lots they want, not the urban environment they have. If they were pushing for green space on this project, which I suspect, it could easily have killed the necessary unit density to make the project feasible. Lack of tenants would not be a problem in this area.

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if there was a shopping mall in there? The last thing the downtown area needs is more open "green" spaces along main corridors. Downtown was, is, and will be for the foreseeable future, office space. Green spaces are nice, but only if you have a mass of buildings around them with people that can funnel out of the buildings and onto the open area. There is simply no one around to use these things other than businesspeople on lunches. Having people downtown to use things like pocket parks would be nice, but it's a pipe dream at best. Parks costs money in terms of lost tax revenue and maintenance expenses. Grand Rapids doesn't have that revenue. What Grand Rapids needs but will never have to make downtown park space work is "desirable" higher income residents to use such spaces who might act as a catalyst toward installing additional higher end retail which will in turn attract additional people to downtown. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see that happening for the foreseeable future, since this town is run by a coterie of economically ignorant morons. In my view, for any of major downtown revitalization to occur, Grand Rapids needs to wean itself from the city income tax. Instead, they're increasing dependency on it! This is insane! You're simply never going to attract to your city couples with an income of $150,000.00 when you charge them about $2,000.00 for the "privilege" of living and working there. Once the Ren Zones are done, you aren't going to be able to give away one of those $200,000.00 condos in Union Square or various other developments. Downtown residential, retail, parks, etc. are all quaint ideas, but they're dead in the water with that tax.

Something is supposed to be going in to the old Rafav's spot soon over in Eastown. And across the street, there a new shop selling "glassware". Is anything going on with the new Phoenix building? It still looks rather empty to me.

It is indeed a shiny new Pizza Hut, opening Monday! Nothing against Brick Road, but $10 pizzas blow their cuisine out of the water, no matter how much vegan magic-sauce they sprinkle on it. Of course, I'm not sure if I'll be able to take the grueling 200 foot walk from Pizza Hut's door to mine, though. It's going to be rough. I'm thinking of ordering delivery instead, just to see the look on the delivery guy's face. If he's got a good arm, he could probably hit my back porch from their parking lot. Speaking of restaurants on Wealthy, anyone familiar with Rendezvous restaurant (which occupies the space formerly occupied by the Intersection and then some Indian restaurant)? It was open for a couple weeks (if that) in December, then shut down. Then there was recently a sign announcing a grand opening, then the sign was gone. Is this restaurant a go, or dead?

I don't think I've seen this posted yet ... This is on the other end of Wealthy a bit from the other usual topics of discussion, but a new Pizza Hut is supposedly going in on the corner of Wealthy and Atlas in what used to be a Rent-A-Center. I'm not sure how the parking will work. Hopefully Pizza Hut has a deal to use Uptown Assembly Of God's terrible, ugly, blighted, fenced-off-and-chained-shut-6-days-a-week eyesore parking lots littered all over the place. I like churches as much as the next guy, but this one is in a terrible spot, and trashing that whole area with their 30,000 sqft of unused parking lots: Count 'em up: lot on Lake next to the Eastown Hub lot, lot on Wealthy & Atlas across from new Hut, and lot on Atlas next to new Hut. Not that the giant car wash helps that whole dead corner situation, but at least its for sale. If Pizza Hut has no parking deal, there will be another situation of streets packed with cars while three HUGE lots sit unused six days a week.