33 replies to this topic

[archiham04]

TRC agenda item 3 "other business" Pre-review for the Indigo hotel consisting of six floors with 101 units (99,920 sf)

[orulz]

^ What is the date for this TRC meeting? They don't have agendas posted online past March 19th.

Exciting, though... very exciting. Downtown Asheville has a surprising lack of options when it comes to hotels. This isn't quite what I'd call a "prime" property, and yet it's getting a sizeable development, though on second thought it is extremely visible from I-240...

Wonder how Montford will react? This is across the highway from their neighborhood so the real impact will be minimal, but still...

[archiham04]

Couple of thoughts.  All of the Montford Ave homes were originally built to take advantage of the views toward Pisgah.  At the time they all looked over a clearcut swath all the way down to the river.  Today the only place that has veiws is the NEW chamber building on the old Steak House site.  The trees have returned and blocked the vistas.  The Indigo will have a protected view corridor because of I240.  Trees will never block their view.  Veiws are the most desireable aspect of this property. Plus all the new development at the entrance to montford has created a really pleasant little pedstrian core there.  It doesn't surprise me at all.

Its the 4/2 agenda.  They email it out to folks prior.

Edited by archiham04, 22 March 2007 - 08:38 AM.

[rooster8]

Can someone pinpoint this on a map?

[archiham04]

rooster8, on Mar 22 2007, 01:33 PM, said:

Can someone pinpoint this on a map?

link

[rooster8]

That's a pretty good location - near the Grove Arcade and all.  Too bad the vast BellSouth parking lot is across the street and not shops or entertainment venues.

It's also too bad that they're not going into an older building downtown.  Quite a few of the other Indigos are in older structures.

Edited by rooster8, 22 March 2007 - 02:54 PM.

[hauntedheadnc]

There's not a lot of parking on that site, and to build any sort of hotel, they'll have to squeeze it onto the lot.  If they're not going to try to put a parking deck into this plan to serve the guests, will this help in the push to develop a deck near the Grove Arcade?  The folks at Battery Park have made it clear their main concern is the protection of their cracked, weedy parking lot, so that's out, but people keep suggesting the BellSouth lot as an ideal location for a deck.  Really it is, especially one screened retail.

Edited by hauntedheadnc, 22 March 2007 - 04:11 PM.

[orulz]

rooster8, on Mar 22 2007, 04:53 PM, said:

It's also too bad that they're not going into an older building downtown.  Quite a few of the other Indigos are in older structures.

Too bad, yes, but remind me again exactly where there's an old building downtown that is 1. unused, and 2. big enough to convert into a hotel, much less a hotel with 101 rooms?

In my perfect world, they would have torn down the parking deck at College & Biltmore, and rebuilt the old Langren Hotel. Not likely this decade, people still like their parking too much.

Perhaps one of the three subsidized housing buildings could have been tapped (Battery Park, Vanderbilt, Woodfin) but those aren't for sale, and probably won't be any time soon.

[Rufus]

wait...is this the kimpton hotels brand Hotel Indigo or another boutique hotel?

[hauntedheadnc]

orulz, on Mar 22 2007, 05:16 PM, said:

In my perfect world, they would have torn down the parking deck at College & Biltmore, and rebuilt the old Langren Hotel. Not likely this decade, people still like their parking too much.

The loss of the Langren was probably the most grievous architectural loss for modern Asheville.  You could argue the loss of the old courthouse or the old Battery Park Hotel, but they've been gone for nearly 80 years apiece.  

Personally, I'm happy to see parking lots and crummy little buildings from the 60's being removed.  If there's anything the city needs less of, it's those.

[rooster8]

Quote

Too bad, yes, but remind me again exactly where there's an old building downtown that is 1. unused, and 2. big enough to convert into a hotel, much less a hotel with 101 rooms?

Good point.  There really isn't such a structure downtown just sitting around.

[orulz]

hauntedheadnc, on Mar 22 2007, 06:09 PM, said:

The loss of the Langren was probably the most grievous architectural loss for modern Asheville.  You could argue the loss of the old courthouse or the old Battery Park Hotel, but they've been gone for nearly 80 years apiece.

Agreed. And we should thank our lucky stars that's all we've lost.

Take a look at Durham. What was once the largest, most urban city in the state. Its downtown was absolutely decimated by urban renewal, and in spite of some progress towards turning things around Downtown, that decimation continues on the periphery to this very day. They've lost twice as much as Asheville ever even had in the first place. Spend a few hours reading Endangered Durham. You'll end up depressed.

Sad.

edit: Sorry! Didn't mean to get so off-topic. I'll be watching the development mapper for this one to show up!

[hauntedheadnc]

I'm waiting for a rendering or a site plan.

[hauntedheadnc]

A blurb appeared in today's paper mentioning that the project is expected to be 10 stories and will go before the Technical Review Committee.  I know the NIMBY's will totally lose it now that the article's been put out there, so I wrote a letter to the editor attempting to beat them to the punch.

---

To the Editor:

I understand a ten-story hotel/condo tower is proposed for downtown.  It’s location will displease those who want nothing built anywhere downtown ever because downtown is perfect, shabby parking lots and 60's vintage sprawl included.  The height will upset the even larger contingent of deluded souls who fail to notice those tall buildings built in the 20's, in the midst of their Mayberry.

I will now condense the arguments sure to blast from both NIMBY factions.  

Ahem.

If a ten story building is approved downtown, it will block views, blot out the sun, eat babies, and we’ll all writhe horribly in frozen lightless streets waiting for Mistress Death to mercifully bestow her kiss and leave our corpses for the cerberus hounds of hell to scavenge upon.  Also, I didn’t move here from (Akron/Philadelphia/Phoenix/Tampa) just so someone could ruin my Asheville’s small-town quaintness with a ten-story building.

There.  I’ve done the work for you, NIMBY’s.  Rest easy.

Sarcasm aside, I hope this project sails through approval.  Vertical growth always trumps horizontal sprawl.  There are plenty of parking lots and 30-year-old architectural pimples downtown that should be replaced by the kind of growth Asheville was brave enough to build 80 years ago.

[orulz]

Good one, hauntedheadnc... hopefully it finds its way to the paper!

Interesting about 10 stories though. The actual item on the P&Z commission still says 6 stories, to the best of my knowledge.

This is a very wide, though very shallow lot. It would fit something as broad as the Renaissance, or perhaps even broader, if the developers build from lot line to lot line. I'd rather not see a long communist block sort of building like that. I hope that if this building is indeed 10 stories, it's something like a 4 or 5 story base with a 10 story tower.

[rooster8]

This article confirms a ten story building, with the top three floors condominiums.  I just hope the plans are changed like the College Street office building.

Downtown hotel discussed

[archiham04]

I noticed an drill truck out doing soils borings last week... that could mean that someone is serious about this project...

[hauntedheadnc]

Renderings aplenty!

http://www.hotelindigo-asheville.com/

Tragically, the building is ugly.  Apparently, architects have not gotten the memo that the 60's were bad the first time through, and nobody wants to relive them.  This looks like an overgrown piece of that googie crap you find all over Palm Springs.  Why in God's name are architects so determined to build bad buildings in Asheville all of a sudden?

[rooster8]

It would be nice if they could do a row of buildings on top of the parking deck on the left side of the hotel.  It looks like an island with the parking on one side and the plaza on the other.

[orulz]

I kind of like this tower above the ground floor. I agree it does have a bit of a 60s feel, but unlike some, I don't find all 60s architecture to be hideous. Sure there was plenty of bad architecture in the 60s, but there was some pretty good stuff too. At street level, though, this design gets a lower grade. The building completely ignores both street corners and places parking ramps there (W. Haywood & O'Henry, W. Haywood & Montford), and there is little interaction with the sidewalk. I guess the little patio area helps a bit, but that's raised from sidewalk level, and there's not even any way to enter the building directly from the sidewalk.

I might be convinced to live with all that if everything else were great, but it's not. The parking platform at W. Haywood and Montford is pure urbanicide. It will be impossible to develop West Haywood as an urban corridor with stuff like this along it. Sure, W. Haywood isn't regarded as the "core" of downtown, nor is it particularly urban, but a big long street level parking platform like this will kill its future potential.

I can't imagine that the downtown commission would approve such a design without at least some vague statement from the developer that they could build over the deck in the future and put something in that activates the street.