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DDA OKs $3.2M loan for Redico office building


Allan

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That's the spot on the back that I hoped would support the tower. I've seen the steel from higher up, but now that I see this up close image, it looks pretty small, and spacing between them is close indicating it would probably just be the same height as the rest of the building - sigh - :(

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Even if we are, is it really that bad?  I really couldn't care less if they left it like that forever.  When the Hudson's Block is built on, it will block most of that view, anyway.

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Its not horrible but I always thought it looked out of place with the rest of the structure. Ill take a building on Hudsons block over an expanded Compuware though. Im curious about Hudsons block though. Will the underground parking limit the height of a potential building on it?

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I sure hope they never put a tower on Compuware. That would ruin the design. It wasn't meant to be a tall building, and some odd tower rising out the back would just look strange. There are plenty of other sites downtown that an office tower would look good on. The back of the Compuware Building is not one of them, and luckily, it's not built so that it could support a tower sticking out of its back.

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Hell no, give me my damn tower!!

comp_asis.jpg

Great, but could use something more.

comp_wolverine.jpg

Hell yeah... that's what I'm talking about. I cut it short on the walls, so use your imagination.

comp_lmich.jpg

Yawn, the last thing Detroit needs is a fat, short building. You get a poorly tarred roof along with that too as well as my unfinished walls.

Now I'll go put my crayons away.

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I'm so happy you are all  calling my photosphopped images renderings.  Screw architecture school, I'm off to the big firms, baby!!

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Dont get too excited. I said rendering for lack of a better term. :D

rbdetsport from the street and most other views you cannot see the steel supports. I dont think they take away from the design anyway. I just dont like the way that tower portion would look. It looks very awkward/

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But then what would be the point of the tower at all? If a tower were to have been part of the structure it would have been on the Campus Martius park end, otherwise it just looks odd. Stacking a tower on to a back of a building just doesn't make sense to me unless it has a prominent showplace somewhere else which it won't have.

It seems like some are just suggesting a tower on Compuware just for the sake of height and not design. The back of Compuware was not built with a tower in mind and it's easy to see why. There are some many other places a standalone tower would look better, like the Monroe Block or Hudson's.

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My point is, the Compuware building just might expand someday, and if it does, it wouldn't look right if it was built up to the exact height of the rest of the building. The V-shape is fine, and in all honesty, I think the Compuware building is good as is. But if it is expanded, I think that portion should have some difference in height so we don't have an oversized box sitting in the middle of downtown. My drawings may not be all that great, but they can give a pretty good idea of what it will look like. The reason why I didn't add height to the entire building was because I wanted to keep it scaled to the heights of the surrounding builidngs in Campus Martius park. However, the tower would be visible from other streets adding some height to the sitelines of the CBD. But adding towers in odd places isn't something new for Detroit. Check out my model of Hudsons Department Store in the Barry Sanders Project thread here. It's an exact model of the building, so nothing is exaggerated. Note how the tower does not face Woodward, and about half of the building is higher than the other. That building was built in phases too.

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Great discussion. But, Hudson's mis-matched additions worked because it was square (rectangular), and your eyes followed the setbacks that rose somewhwat gracefully to an elevator tower.

There is nothing you could do with the current design of Compuware to gracefully put a tower up in the back of it. It just looks awkward on a building of that shape (diamond). And, the building is already squat retaining that squat shape even with it's missing piece.

Really, I'd like to see someone show what this tower would look like from the front or side.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was there tonite and i would say the steel is probably 40 ft high. You cant tell on the webcam but its growing in height. I think a 10 story building is perfect there for the scale of everything surrounding it. Its going to be a great addition downtown IMO.

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I was down at the Kennedy site this afternoon and the steel rises about 3 or 4 stories. I tried to imagine 10 stories, and it seemed just about the right height for that spot. Any higher would take away from the whole scale of that area. It preserves a lot of the views of the BEAUTIFUL towers beyond it. I think it will turn out great, and will be a nice welcoming addition to our city.

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It is starting to grow on me. I was a little disappointed at the height when it was first announced but i now think that it is the perfect height. It will still allow people to enjoy the Penobscot and Dime buildings from the park which I think is important. And it will give that park more retail around it and hopefully more people will hang out around that area. I would like to see a much much taller building on the Monroe block though. I think it would be cool to have a 40-50 story building enclosing one side of that area.

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I probably saw you downtown today Michi but didn't know it. I'm still trying to picture what a 10 story building is going to look like in the campus martius view. I agree with everyone that as long as the old can still be view behind it, it will fit in nicely.

40-50 story tower on the monre block? I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. I think it will be too out of scale with the area. I used to think a nice 10-15 story building would look great (like the renderings), but I saw an old picture of the site with it being filled with around 5 story buildings and a tower, which I'm starting to think isn't that bad of an idea either.

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I think Monroe block should be nice small under 5 story separate buildings all bordering each other. More than 5 stories, and one big building just wouldnt look right.

I want monroe block to be essentially what it was originally, storefronts

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