Detroit Clears way for Redevelopment of Book-Cadillac & Fort-Shelby Hotels

[RustTown]

My God, that would be down-right CRAZY. How does Detroit hope to actually revitalize if every single resident, worker, and visitor in downtown is to have there own parking space?! That is no way to revitalize and urban city, but it sure is a way to turn a formerly urban downtown into Southfield South.

This is where I'd tell Peebles to take a hike, and hope that we could find a new developer for the Lafayette, and with a B-C now solidly under renovation, I don't think the city would have to waste near the amount of time trying a developer for this one than they did before the B-C announcement.

The ONLY way I could see myself supporting another garage is if they make it an architectural masterpiece, include ground floor retail, and stack a TOWER on top of it to take away some of the bulk of there being a garage there. Otherwise, three garages surrounding the Lafayette?! Give me a break. Who'd want to live in a building in a location like that? (i.e. sounded by parking garages)

[Michi]

If the term "historic" had no value, then the BC would be crap. It would be more feasable to tear it down and build a new design-less box in its place. Only problem is, the reason people are coming back to the city is for what it offers and what is there to preserve. Historic preservation is a huge tool and huge factor in what brings people to a place. Not just each individual building, but the cityscape as well.

Parking garages on every corner completely overwhelms the lack of sense of place and creates a sense of waste. Why would anyone want to live amongst a sense of waste? I want to live in an urban, historic, exciting cityscape complete with the BC, DCB, Lafayette, etc... I don't mind garages. They are necessary, no doubt. But when that's all there is, it's a problem and revitalizing the city becomes more and more difficult.

[RustTown]

That is the irony of it all. The more parking you build to support these projects, the less desirable they make the neighborhood.

But, even if the downtown must have parking for every single resident, worker, and visitor, the very LEAST the city should require developers to do is force the parking into the smallest footprint possible, and require them to be automated elevator types like the one at Merchants Row.

By tearing down the likes of the Commerce and M-L and so on and so on, the city is actually working against itself in the long run. If developers refuse to be creative it's high time the city put some real pressure on them to do so. It's not so much the realization that parking is needed in a city that lacks reliable, region-wide mass transit, but that developers have NO incentive what so ever to be creative about how they carve out parking for these projects.

[detroitfan]

I wonder what this means for the Lafayette. In it's development thread it was first brought up in Dec of last year about it sharing parking with the BC. This pretty much leaves it without any dedicated parking.

Condos to top off Capitol Park site

Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News

Upscale housing in Detroit continues to reach new heights, as a developer took steps Wednesday to build 80 condos on top of a planned parking garage.

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A...070384/1001/BIZ

[Zissou]

How many total spaces does the BC need? Because i believe the garage is in the 550 range and these new condos want aroud 150, leaving close to 400 available.

[RustTown]

Let's see...

The garage is proposed to hold 528 spots

1. Roxbury is to lease 120 for the condos to go on top.

That leaves 408.

2. Lafayette Building is proposed to hold 110 units.

3. The B-C will have 67 condos.

That leaves 231 spaces left for the 455-room Westin Book-Cadillac.

I'm not sure, do hotels usually require parking for every single room? If so, the Lafayette's going to have to find somewhere else to park.

[dtown]

I pray that the city doesnt let them put all those garages in right next each other. Lets see it go underground!

[RustTown]

There is no way a Lafayette garage, especially in that location, is going below the ground, at least not the whole thing. That's something you'd expect, perhaps, in a few years when the downtown development movement becomes self-sustained and land values skyrocket, but not now. I think the best one could hope for is another garage able to support another building. And, the only solution to this problem of parking, really, is effective mass transit.

[Zissou]

Perhaps the city, now anticipating a building on top, will draw up plans for a larger garage capable of including the Lafayette Building.

[RustTown]

You could be right, because the city (DEGC) still hasn't decided how many floors the garage will be. The article says 8-10 and maybe that's measuring in the difference of the Lafayette units.

I shot off an email to Roxbury Group, the developers of this project. I don't expect a reply, but it never hurts to write. If you guys would like to shoot them an email, here is their address:

[email protected]

[statedude3]

Dont forget about efficiency too. That site looks to be about equal in size to the ramp (6 levels) in Fort Washinton Plaza (Formerly 333 W. Fort). I'm not sure if you guys have every used that ramp, but it is a terrible pain the the rear to use. With the same layout, but going over 8 or so levels you are looking at 10-15 minutes to enter/exit.

[dtown]

Unless it has an elevator. Or does the garage your eferring to have an elevator as well? Im not familliar with it.

[RustTown]

333 West Fort. It's the parking garage/office structure mix. It's the only black/dark brown modern building on Fort Street.

[wolverine]

Okay, so with the current space count, can anyone give an approximation how high the current parking structure will be without the condos? When placed on top, we could very easily have a nice tall building...if well designed of course.

[statedude3]

Unless it has an elevator. Or does the garage your eferring to have an elevator as well? Im not familliar with it.

[RustTown]

Okay, so with the current space count, can anyone give an approximation how high the current parking structure will be without the condos? When placed on top, we could very easily have a nice tall building...if well designed of course.

[rbdetsport]

So if they dont use the whole area, using only the square part, the tower could be bigger. Almost 12 stories or more?

[RustTown]

Imagine two floors taken off of the 1001 Woodward Parking Structure and stacked with 8 or so floors of parking:

Patrick Drove - http://www.flickr.com/photos/18169862@N00/

It think it's safe to assume with how parking architecture has been getting increasingly better in downtown, and with ground floor retail required for new city garages that we can expect something decent out of this project at the very worst.

[statedude3]

I think it would be neat to see the top level of the garage used as an outdoor rec area for the condo tower, much like Millender Center. Not only would it entice people to live there, but it would also serve an aesthetic pleasure to the condos in both the new tower and taller surrounding buildings.

[Zissou]

That would be a neat feature but I think the 1001 people are holding out that somewhere down the line the market will dictate them adding more units on top of the garage. There investment in strengthening that garage for added floors would pay off that way.

[illmatic774]

haha, thats a kickass garage

[Jasoncw]

I'm excited about that. If it's designed well, I think it could be awesome. Unfortunatly, if it's not designed well, then we're going to be stuck with it for a long time.

I hope that it has some kind of a tower appearence to the eastern side, since you'll be able to see that from Campus Martius (I'm pretty sure), and of course, when you're walking around by the coney islands. Not really a big towerness to it, but just an extra story or something on that side, and a tower-like design. I guess the garage will be really horizontal, so it might be hard to make the overall thing vertical, but I just don't want it to be a big flat box like the garage posted earlier in this thread.

[RustTown]

I think it would be neat to see the top level of the garage used as an outdoor rec area for the condo tower, much like Millender Center. Not only would it entice people to live there, but it would also serve an aesthetic pleasure to the condos in both the new tower and taller surrounding buildings.

[statedude3]

If you familiar with any of Vegas' condo towers going up or proposed, almost every single one of them has a parking structure podium, which is almost always topped by an outdoor recreation/gym/pool area on the top deck of the parking structure podium. It's really not that uncommon in projects going up in Las Vegas, Miami...

It does make less since it cold-weather environments, though, where the amenities are usually included on one of the indoor floors.

[RustTown]

lol! Still, it's not all that uncommon to have these deck-top recreation areas up here. Heck, both Trolley Plaza and Millender Center have one. It's just less common up here than down there.