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The Metro on Granby (401 Granby)


vdogg

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  • 4 weeks later...

had to look up this location...wow that will be great for granby.that will add some needed zing to granby.

One thing I notice that is lacking in these DT developments, the lack of roof top entertainment, such as resturants and/or urban basketball/Tennis roof top courts. Those are pretty popular in other cities such as atlanta and charlotte.

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There has been so much fighting over the years between downtown residents and entertainment  below their dwellings, I think it's not in a developers best interest to put entertainment above.  Typically, entertainment is above high rise offices and hotels, not strictly residential structures.

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Yeah I noticed that too.  I read somewhere that the Wainright is going to have amenities on the roof including a pool and dog park....

 

I would love to see the Wainright build a parking garage on the parking lot next to the building and put a new tower on top of that garage.  That would definitely be ideal.

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I would love to see the Wainright build a parking garage on the parking lot next to the building and put a new tower on top of that garage.  That would definitely be ideal.

 

I know this article is off topic (and old) for the thread it is in, but it does answer urbanlife's post about the Wainwright Building:

 

Developer plans to put apartments in Wainwright

 

The part that relates to your post:

 

"According to their plans, the developers will convert the office space into 119 apartments at a cost of about $20 million. A second phase would include building 80 apartments around a parking deck in an adjacent parking lot."

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Whether you're a fan of Gadams or not, I thought this was somewhat interesting and unique to downtown apartment living.  http://norfolklive.blogspot.com/2013/02/gadams-apartment-complexes-could-all.html

I love everything Gadams stands for in Norfolk. He single handedly changes the complexion of neighborhoods and is willing to invest to make things better. It was a horrible day for Norfolk when Granby Tower was done for good thanks to the mettling of th GSA. He wanted to build a landmark and skyline icon, something Norfolk is still looking for to this day. i WISH it could be revived.

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I love everything Gadams stands for in Norfolk. He single handedly changes the complexion of neighborhoods and is willing to invest to make things better. It was a horrible day for Norfolk when Granby Tower was done for good thanks to the mettling of th GSA. He wanted to build a landmark and skyline icon, something Norfolk is still looking for to this day. i WISH it could be revived.

He probably got a bad rap because there were enough details in the media for the general public to think otherwise. I mean, you really had to dig to know some of these details surrounding GT. Then the fact it took him a long time to refund people's deposits was another issue.  But I agree, I wish it could be revived and I commend him for even daring to be different.  I would have loved to see that development at the synder lot.  think about how nice that would have been now with LRT passing through it!

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I have no qualms with Gadams. For anyone who had an issue getting their money back, all it took was a typed letter sent to their company and my deposit was returned within a few weeks.  So I've always been a little skeptical about that whole situation and whether the Pilot over-sensationalized it a bit.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I look forward to it, but agree the rent is too damn high. (Sorry, couldn't resist hahaha)

 

I was driving through Freemason last week, and saw they're working on the Wainwright building. Can't wait to see how that one turns out...I had a doctor's appointment there last year, and the view of Brambleton was awesome. Would love to have an apartment that overlooks downtown/Boush St.

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Hey Ghentite.....I know you are busy but if you don't mind....can you take a few snaps of all teh projects going on? I hate to bug you (and everyone else) but I'm going through progress update withdrawal. Can you help me out?

 

Yeah, I went out a few weeks ago and posted some updates to the blog.  Not much has changed, other than the Courts Complex.  The facade is really coming along and is looking good.  I'll try to get over there this week and take more photos.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Been a while! I drove by Granby and saw the old Manhattans building was gone and was like, "whaaaaat?"

 

Back stories.

 

401 Granby:

 

I looked into renting the older space that was there for an arcade. Between a few friends I had access to about 100 arcade machines and we thought it would be fun to do an arcade there for a while. But the space had huge mold issues from neglect, non-ADA compliant bathrooms and the entire site was under contract to a hotel.  At the time I didn't know or bother to look up that Gadams owned it, and I didn't really know much about him other than he screwed over a bunch of people on the Tower thing. Couldn't really ever get an answer from anyone, and the realtor I think gave us a hint -- don't do it here, do it in Virginia Beach. We thought about it in more depth and we'd end up with all the issues that MacArthur had.

 

Wainwright:

 

Was a tenant in that building. I knew the owners a little bit. Fascinating watching it all go down.

 

When Buddy Gadams got the Wainwright for $3 million dollars, he pretty much forced us to sign a one year lease - ending on December 31st.

 

Right as October came up, he basically said we're not honoring the lease any more you have 30 days to vacate. That isn't *that* big of a deal other than the part where we were knee deep in driving the Norfolk Mini Maker Faire. The Maker Faire was a huge success (by number of people, over 1300) and definitely a killer addition to the otherwise generally boring scene around town. But we didn't need the headache of trying to move the entire hackerspace right on top of trying to run a killer event, especially when Gaddams was 100% cheating us.

 

All these developers are running after high priced apartments to milk the young people. The proper thing for the young people to do is revolt against them. They're killing their future. It would be funny if the apartments cratered the market and drove rents way down, but unfortunately many of the pompos rich a-holes that own it all will let it sit empty.

 

Meanwhile, LOTS of people are leaving / have left Hampton Roads recently. I've never seen anything like it before.

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