Ka3kab

That makes sense. It seems like they got the building up and then took forever to clad it. But yeah, almost done now. Any idea if they will halt construction for the cherry fest.

No pictures yet, but work on the Bank of Northern Michigan is almost wrapped up (for the exterior, anyway) and they have began excavation work for a building that is part of the Federated Properties line-up. This one is the 3 or 4 story building going up on the north side of W. Front St. (across from the old Ford dealership, and next to J&S Hamburg for those familiar with the area.) I'll try to get some shots of both of these, maybe later today. Other than that, it's a whole lot of not much around here. Being tourist season and all, they don't like to start too many projects until after the Cherry Festival ( only 12 days left).

You bungee-jumped from another bridge and took the shot at the bottom.

I only eat the pasties my Mom and Dad make, other than that I don't think I've ever had one anywhere else. That is kind of wierd because I actually love the damn things.

Sunny and a mere 88 degrees. Why not take the dog for a walk and snap off a few shots. I forgot my camera bag and ended up with a full card, so I could only get off four shots. These were taken on the southern end of Boardman Lake looking north toward downtown. Plus I threw in some ducks, what the hell, why not. This little park I'm in is off of very busy South Airport Rd. in the Logan's Landing complex. Enjoy. If you look close at the other end of the lake, you can sort of see the Park Place and some other buildings that line the lake. And now for some ducks.

Not too forward thinking at all, I would also say. And they like to proclaim themselves as "New Urbanists". What BS. If I had to place odds on the passages of this ordinance, I would give it 3-1 odds. BTW, this would not effect the two plans already in progress, the Federated builing (at 108 feet) and the Snowden building (at 88 feet) unless they somehow let their respective specail land-use permits expire.

This is why sometimes I just hate living in Traverse City. First you have a bunch of people not wanting sprawl, which is a good thing, but at the same time they don't want building heights to even be 125 feet. The Traverse City city commision will vote soon on to drop the C-4c Zoning in a small area in downtown (the area bordered mostly by Front St, State St. and Union St.) from the current 125 feet to just 68 feet. On top of that, anything over 60 feet will still require a special-use permit. If you don't want to grow out, shouldn't the obvious alternative be to build up?

From what I read, not entirely at first. They will own the entire building though, so I guess they will either be leasing out empty space or leaving it alone for future expansion.

I figure I will put something up here since nothing has been posted in a while. Maybe you guys remember a few months back I posted a story about a developer wanting to convert an office building on the shore of West Bay in Greilikville into condos and how that was shot down. Well it appears there will be some new life for the building. A local web developer company called OneUpWeb has purchased the building and will use most of the space for thier operation. Good news because the building has been vacant for quite some time now and it really is a nice building.

All right. I don't know if I have talked about this before on here, but for the last few years the University of Michigan and Michigan State University engineering students were asked to come up with some plans for the bayfront in downtown Traverse City. As far as I know, there have never been visuals available to the public. Finally, there are. There are three ideas. The first one is called "The Big Move" and, in my opinion, is the best concept. It is also probebly the most expensive, so we'll see. It involes moving the Grandview Parkway below grade and adding a couple of land bridges for access to the waterfront. It also involves building an amphitheater, a skating rink, parking deck, aquarium, beach house, an expanded marina, new stalls at the Farmers Market and putting up mix-use infill. The second is called "String of Pearls" and is by far, again in my opinion, the absolute worst idea I have ever heard. This one mostly involves creating round-a-bouts (traffic circles) at each intersection along the Parkway. This one also calls for a skating rink and amphitheater along with some gardens and a greenhouse. It would also reuse the now closed zoo turning the building into something yet to be determined. There is also more focus put on the Boardman River with an expanded boardwalk and repairing the riparian edges. The third idea is called "The Green Scheme". This one, as the name implies would add a whole lot of more environmental friendly areas to the park. It calls for moving the Parkway a little south, utilizing Bay St. as the eastbound lanes and building a new lane for westbound traffic. The original parkway would be destroyed and turned into more park area. They would also build gardens, ponds and greenhouses. This plan would also restore the riparian edges of the river, make a area for whitewater kayaking (I'm not real sure how, the river moves at about four mph) restore the wetland edges of the river and bay and add a rain garden. Some good ideas are in all of these plans, but just like everything else, it is all dependent on money. So we'll see if any of this ever happens. Here is the link to the plans. City of Traverse City

These are terrible pictures and I may not be able to really do this, but here are some pictures that I found in a book and scanned into my computer (hope it's not illegal ) that I thought I would share here. They were taken from around 1880 to the mid 1980's. This first one is of a factory on West Bay (the open space now) Can you imagine this being in place today. Oh my god. Lumber Mill from around the turn of the century. Park Place Hotel as it originally looked in the 1890's. A more modern Park Place in the 1950's. There are still some things missing from the hotel in this picture from the one you would see today. On the 9th Floor their are balconies on the four setbacks. Munson Hospital in the 1950's. Obviousley this building is long gone. That is obvious if you have been to the hospital in the past 20 years. This house today is a funeral home (I posted a shot of it a few pages ago) but this is when it was still a home to Perry Hannah, one of Traverse City's founders. Hannah, Lay and Co. building from a shot taken in 1886. A picture of the old and new courthouse taken in the mid 1980's. One of two fires that destroyed the city in the late 1800's. Downtown street scene from the 1880's. Ariel view of downtown from the 1970's. Street scene downtown in the 1920's. Building 50 when it was still part of the State Psyciatric Hospital. Ariel view of downtown in the 1980's. A picture of what today is 5/3 bank (formerly, in this picture, Traverse City State Bank and then Old Kent Bank.) during construction in the 1920's.

No, nobody was. There were three crew and 46 passengers. On the news, some of the passengers said they felt like the plane was coming in too fast. It was snowing hard and apparently there was a tailwind, which from what I've heard from some pilots is that it is the worst way to land. Back to your comment about that being you're worst fear, I hear you.

I used to, for five years I worked at Cherry Capital airport. Even though I did not work for any airline, you can still pick up a lot of stuff from just being there and working with the airline employees. I worked for the TSA, you know, the jackasses that rumage through your luggage and make you take your shoes and coat off. God, I hated that place.

Its not a collapsable area and it eventually ended up on the field. There is a 200 ft. blast area off of the main runway that is paved but this plane stopped 55 ft. off of that. The word now is that the front landing gear came clean off and the brakes were not working. So, that must have been pretty damn freaky.

Check out this picture from the Record-Eagle website. It is of a Northwest Airlines jet that skid off the runway early today (about 12:30 am). This is the second time in four years that a NWA jet has skid off this runway. Todays was because of an apparent brake problem. Pretty scary stuff, I imagine, for those on board.

This, in theory, is a great idea. To be honest, I am not an environmentalist of any sort (for god sake, I don't even recycle ) but to me this is a no brainer. Put a farm on top of these hills around town and it may as well be free energy. I have to wonder if it will happen though. By now most people know how I feel about the majority of my fellow Traverse Cityens. By that I mean they don't like new things. But for this project, it makes me wonder because there is such a huge group of environmentalists around here. I can only imagine that any opposition to this will come from, and this will be quite ironic, from developers. These farms are huge and will take up a whole lot of acerage. It will be interensting to see how this pans out.

Almost forgot. I went to the hospital today for a little pre-employment checkup and managed to squeeze of a couple (literaly) shots of what is going on over there. I really have no idea what that top one is but it is connected by a skywalk to the main hospital, so I can only assume that is part of the hospital. The second one is actually going to be all vacant exept for the bottom floor, which is where the new ER is already open, the remaining floors will be occupied when they need the space (wish I had money to build space that I may need, but don't at the moment.)

Bizarre I know. Maybe this will help. It's lengthy and somewhat confussing (for me anyway because this is not my area of knowledge at all) but it is a market analysis report done for Traverse City, but also includes the rest of Grand Traverse County as well as the 5-County region. It is pretty simple to me that this area loves to build out, but then complain about it when it happens. The most amazing thing that stands out to me is the total area (in sq. feet) of retail/office space in Grand Traverse County and the vacancy rates. Downtown Traverse City: 458,745 sq.ft with a vacancy rate of 2.4% Rest of Traverse City : 1,295,095 sq. ft with a vacancy rate of 8.3% Grand Traverse County : 3,652,696 sq. ft with a vacancy rate of 4.4% To me it is simple math, too little square feet downtown and to much out in the county (maybe, 4.4% has to be pretty damn good). But a vacancy rate of 2.4% downtown. I can only guess, but I'm thinking most cities would sell their souls to have that kind of rate. Anyway, if you all want take a look at it and see what you think. Downtown Traverse City Market Analysis Report

I know, I looked all around the building for it, but with no luck. As for the other post, I'm not sure why there is opposition to it. It will have much needed parking for that side of downtown, it will have four floors of retail and commercial space and it will have four floors of residential space actually moderatley priced ($250,000 for a two bed-room unit). Some people think that it does not fit in with the character of downtown, to which I say bulls&#t. There is a ten story building right next door and another ten story building on the other side of downtown (which is only four blocks long). So, I guess I'm not real clear about why some people don't want it. To me it just seems like they like to beotch about anything and everything in this town.

Well a hot dog stand would look better there than that nasty garage. I went downtown today, and holy crap, I actually took some pictures. The sign with what the building should look like was gone, but here is what it looks like so far. Also Dtown, I'm not sure if there going to be the cheap fake bricks or not. Also took some shots of where Federated wants to put in its new eight story building and parking deck. Sorry there are so few pictures, but my camera was full and I didn't bring an extra card. Go figure, I get off my arsse and I don't even bother to see how many shots I have left. Oh well.

Cheap, for sure.

No, there is a board out in front of the building of what it will look like. Pretty standard stuff, Red brick walls and holes for windows. I'll get a shot of that as well.

These ones don't play video, from what I've seen so far. But it's kind of cool that we have some now. Some good news for downtown. The County has officially entered into talks with Federated Properties to lease back spaces from the parking deck they want to include in the eight story project for W. Front St. This has really pissed off people in the city. I think its hilarious myself. Traverse City Record-Eagle In other news. The bank at the corner of State and Union is coming along nicely. No pictures right now (I should really get down there sometime with my camera) but most of the shell is up now. A few more months and it should be done, I would think.

Hey, speaking of South Airport Rd., I was driving down it last night and saw a LCD billboard. It is only LCD if you are driving east, the other side is just a plain billboard. I guess there is one on US 31 at 3 Mile Rd. Ooh, look at us, movin' on up.