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Richland Mall Redevelopment

lastweek

By lastweek
in Columbia

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Trumble Unincorporated Area

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Here's the sketch... I hosted it at photobucket.com, and they reduced it to 183K, so it's somewhat small, but you can get a general idea.

Since a lot of this is gonna be on the roof of the existing garage (I assume somewhat modified in places), I'm a little perplexed as to why they're trying to make it look like street level of the new buildings on the Forest Drive side will be street level with Forest Drive. If anyone here went to the meeting and can offer insight, please do.

But overall, I like the fact that they're not leveling the site to build it... and that the parking garages are staying. I wonder if they're planning to take a level off.

richmall.jpg

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Trumble Unincorporated Area

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Sure is. You know, I guess maybe they're planning to sort of meld those buildings on the FD side with the facade of the parking garage.

So, how do they put real grass up there all over the roof and still have drainage? I guess all the trees would be in "planters" or some other kind of receptacle, right?

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Trumble Unincorporated Area

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^ The grass and trees on the rooftop areas will both be in planters, more than likely.  Luckily with the grass, roots don't grow down very far.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Grass in planters? Hmmm... maybe you mean large areas dedicated to shallow dirt for grass... and, ya still gotta have drainage of some sort... seems like dirt would clog it up if you got rain like we've been having... and you'd have a mini-bog or swamp.

Spartan PMed me and asked for the full-sized file of that drawing... I emailed it to him and he'll be posting it. When you see it, you'll be thinking those trees are pretty large to be in planters.

And even if trees that large can be grown in planters, they better be bolted down very securely if they're gonna withstand the typical 50-60 mph wind gusts that occur during many thunderstorms around here.

If anyone went to the meeting and/or knows more about how some of this stuff like grass will be done, speak up.

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Spartan Gigalopolis

Spartan

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Still working on that image.

The grass wouldn't be that hard to do. I question the drainage methods though. As for the trees.... Carabbas has them and they seem to do ok :rolleyes:

I am having trouble picturing this thing. It seems like the bulidings will be built around the existing stores, literally. The image, however, looks like they will build the neww aroundthe old then tear down the old creating that park thing.

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Spartan Gigalopolis

Spartan

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post-292-1122068353_thumb.jpg

OK- It finally worked. I didn't think Gmail had any restrictions like that, but apparantly it does. I have 2.419 GB for my account, so you'd think it wouldn't be an issue. This image is rather large, so give it a bit to load.

It looks good, and the easier-to-read image makes it more clear. This looks like a first rate development.

They are calling this project 'Midtown at Forest Acres.' It would be cool to actually have 'midtown' as a descriptor for the area.

Be sure to check out their development website: http://www.midtownatforestacres.com/

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Hybrid0NE Hamlet

Hybrid0NE

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I've always said that Forest Acres was Columbia's version of Buckhead. This development would help that come to fruition.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wouldn't it be awesome if Forest Acres grew a Buckhead style skyline? They already got the Biltmore towers near the intersection where this development is going and those roads could handle increased density that comes with highrise construction (with little or no retooling).

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Spartan Gigalopolis

Spartan

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I have always thought that too. There are already some office buildings (albeit small ones) in the area. It could indeed be the next step for Forest Acres. I think this Midtown development could push FA in a better diection than Buckhead though. Pedestrian activity in Buckhead is not as common unless you are walking from one of the hotels to a MARTA stop.

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Thinking architecturally, here's something I thought of looking at the drawing, since they say they're leaving the parking structure. On the sides of the parking garage where those multi-story shop/apartment facades are located, I bet there will be access to each floor of those from the parking garage... and since it would most likely mess up the structural integrity of the garage to make cuts in the 3-4 foot high perimeter walls to allow for doorways, they'd have to put sets of steps up against it so you walk over the wall for entry... the bottom of the doorways would be even with the top of the wall.

If there's room... I'm gonna look to see if it looks like there's at least 6'8" there.

If there's not room, I guess there'd be a way to shore it up in some sort of a retrofit kinda way so they could make doorway cuts.

There might be access from the street side, too, but it would seem like an unneccesarily long walk around from the parking areas.

Anyone here have any educated opinions on this?

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  • 3 months later...
waccamatt Town

waccamatt

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OK, Detective Waccamatt Holmes went on a mission to Richland Mall this evening. In addition to doing a little shopping I did a little digging to find out about the construction across the concourse from S&S Cafeteria. The new developers are building a full scale model condo or apartment for the first part of the mall's redevelopment. Apparently big things are about to happen. There is also a large store under construction behind a wall where the sporting goods store used to be, upstairs near Parisian. I will try to get more info soon.

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