Proposal: Downtown Convention Center

[GvilleSC]

We all know this is just preliminary right now, but that’s a lot of residential floors if those lines are a representation of floors. 

[gman430]

10 minutes ago, GvilleSC said:

We all know this is just preliminary right now, but that’s a lot of residential floors if those lines are a representation of floors. 

Looks to be 16 floors going off the renderings.  Anyways...

 

MECA SC (Museum and Event Center for the Arts in South Carolina) is located on the last remaining site on the Reedy River in downtown Greenville, South Carolina. The project’s ambition is to create a civic event center with world class museums in a master planned development with iconic design. The project will house a 65,000 sf event center, including a 10,000 sf flexible “Jewel Box” located along the river and connected to the exterior public realm. The museums will include the Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery (BJU M&G), which is recognized as one of the finest collections of European Old Masters paintings in America, and the Greenville County Museum of Art (GCMA), which currently only displays 5% of its collection in its existing space. Finally, the building will also include approximately 100 residences above the public program. The synergy between the programs will provide an attraction to downtown while highlighting two of the most important institutions to the city.

The proposed design fosters the connection between the programs through careful placement within the larger building composition while giving identity to each program using form, material, and scale. A simple tower containing the residential program will anchor the building in the skyline and provide a shared lobby with access to all programs at grade. A horizontal bar, elevated off the ground and cantilevered towards the river will give presence on the public river front and contain the event center program. Sitting under the event center bar, two volumes on either side of the shared lobby will house the museum collections and “Jewel Box”.

Edited February 19, 2020 by gman430

[gvegascple]

2 hours ago, gman430 said:

Looks to be 16 floors going off the renderings.  Anyways...

 

Its a little hard to tell, do you think the 16 floors is from the ground up, or on top of the museum?  The rendering makes it look quite taller than the Embassy Suites.  Some height would be nice here.  At this rate, pretty soon some folks who paid a lot for their mountain views in other condos are going to start getting peeved.   I wonder why they went with residential and not hotel when mixed with a convention center.

[vicupstate]

^^ There is a hotel included, but is in next to the main building. It is an addition to the Embassy Suites. 

The other condos on the River would not have their views block by this building.  

 

[gman430]

2 hours ago, gvegascple said:

Its a little hard to tell, do you think the 16 floors is from the ground up, or on top of the museum?  The rendering makes it look quite taller than the Embassy Suites.  Some height would be nice here.  At this rate, pretty soon some folks who paid a lot for their mountain views in other condos are going to start getting peeved.   I wonder why they went with residential and not hotel when mixed with a convention center.

16 stories from ground to top level. This is only a guess and I could very well be wrong. 

[sptgguy]

Where is the "convention" space? 

[distortedlogic]

6 hours ago, GvilleSC said:

We all know this is just preliminary right now, but that’s a lot of residential floors if those lines are a representation of floors. 

If those are indeed floors, I count 18 on top of the other stuff, not 16, and that does not include the top roof portion. 

[gvegascple]

20 minutes ago, distortedlogic said:

If those are indeed floors, I count 18 on top of the other stuff, not 16, and that does not include the top roof portion. 

I had to squint, I counted 18 sections but the top section looks like it is a facade and not enclosed.  It also appears on top of the building structure beneath it being used as the shared lobby space ( I think ).  That would make this pretty tall, perhaps a new tallest in town even???  Just taking a swag, but it looks just a little shorter than 3x the height of the Embassy Suites.  If you include the facade at the top, just eyeballing things in comparison to the Embassy Suites, it could top out between 90 and 100 meters.

Edited February 19, 2020 by gvegascple

[GvilleSC]

28 minutes ago, sptgguy said:

Where is the "convention" space? 

Conference center space is the long horizontal bar (Above the jewel box and runs the entire site back to front).

Edited February 19, 2020 by GvilleSC

[gman430]

If you’re going off the site plan pics I posted yesterday then yes it is 18 stories above the podium which is the lobby/convention center/museum.  However, the actual rendering appears to be only 16 total floors including the podium. Neither are probably right honestly. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by gman430

[distortedlogic]

1 hour ago, gvegascple said:

I had to squint, I counted 18 sections but the top section looks like it is a facade and not enclosed.  It also appears on top of the building structure beneath it being used as the shared lobby space ( I think ).  That would make this pretty tall, perhaps a new tallest in town even???  Just taking a swag, but it looks just a little shorter than 3x the height of the Embassy Suites.  If you include the facade at the top, just eyeballing things in comparison to the Embassy Suites, it could top out between 90 and 100 meters.

Looks like the top facade would be number 19 to me.   What rendering are you looking at to see 3x the Embassy? 

If this is atop the museums and conference space, (maybe 40 feet for those two floors) , 19 floors would be about 200ft , so maybe the height of the Camperdown? 

But as we've said, who knows, this is just conceptual I'm sure.  And I woud rather have a really nice architectually appealing and beautiful design here over a tall boring box anyway. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by distortedlogic

[gvegascple]

20 minutes ago, distortedlogic said:

Looks like the top facade would be number 19 to me.   What rendering are you looking at to see 3x the Embassy? 

If this is atop the museums and conference space, (maybe 40 feet for those two floors) , 19 floors would be about 200ft , so maybe the height of the Camperdown? 

But as we've said, who knows, this is just conceptual I'm sure.  And I woud rather have a really nice architectually appealing and beautiful design here over a tall boring box anyway. 

This one.  Huge scale assumptions have been made :-)  It would be really close to the Daniel Buildings height.  They would be crazy not to make sure they arent the new tallest if it came down to just a matter of a few feet right?  It looks massive when compared to the ES.

Edited February 19, 2020 by gvegascple

[distortedlogic]

5 minutes ago, gvegascple said:

This one.  Huge scale assumptions have been made :-)  It would be really close to the Daniel Buildings height.  They would be crazy not to make sure they arent the new tallest if it came down to just a matter of a few feet right?

Ok I see what you're doing. I don't know about the height. The Daniel/Landmark is 305. With this being an apt building, I think the floor heights are usually 10 to 12 feet per floor. That only works out to around 200 feet give or take a few depending on whether it's 16 or 18 or 19. The museum and conference floors could be pretty tall but who knows yet. The description says only about 100 residences. This  illustrates my point about some of the other projects with 200-350 apts spaces, imagine if they had a small footprint how many floors they could have been. 

[gvegascple]

6 minutes ago, distortedlogic said:

Ok I see what you're doing. I don't know about the height. The Daniel/Landmark is 305. With this being an apt building, I think the floor heights are usually 10 to 12 feet per floor. That only works out to around 200 feet give or take a few depending on whether it's 16 or 18 or 19. The museum and conference floors could be pretty tall but who knows yet. The description says only about 100 residences. This  illustrates my point about some of the other projects with 200-350 apts spaces, imagine if they had a small footprint how many floors they could have been. 

Going by just the scale of the rendering alone, which again is a HUGE assumption, with the ES being around 31.5m or 103 feet, that would make the new building close to 309 feet if it was around 3x the height.  This would be a good time to add one of those fins on the top :-)

[gman430]

This week, the House Ways and Means Committee will wrap up its discussion of budget provisos — one-year provisions in the law that often direct spending — then send the proposed budget to the full 124-member House. The House will take up the budget — a near reflection of Gov. Henry McMaster’s executive budget — about mid-March.

Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article240424986.html#storylink=cpy

[gman430]

7 hours ago, gvegascple said:

Going by just the scale of the rendering alone, which again is a HUGE assumption, with the ES being around 31.5m or 103 feet, that would make the new building close to 309 feet if it was around 3x the height.  This would be a good time to add one of those fins on the top :-)

Looks like you actually might be right IF the renderings are correct. The arrows in the renderings below point to the Embassy Suites expansion building which appears to be the exact same height as the current Embassy Suites. Going off the second rendering below, it looks like the residential building will be 2.5-3 times taller than the hotel building IF the rendering scale is accurate: 

Edited February 20, 2020 by gman430

[gvegascple]

14 hours ago, gman430 said:

Looks like you actually might be right IF the renderings are correct. The arrows in the renderings below point to the Embassy Suites expansion building which appears to be the exact same height as the current Embassy Suites. Going off the second rendering below, it looks like the residential building will be 2.5-3 times taller than the hotel building IF the rendering scale is accurate: 

 The Embassy Suites expansion looks tiny in the above pic, I guess its farther back and a street over. Its a lot harder to tell in these for me.   I am ready to see some real plans for this.  I keep going back to the plain rendering, mostly because its more optimistic :-)    District West is off in the corner of the rendering and I did some scale comparison calculations and it does appear to be around 19.5 meters if ES is assumed to be 31.5 meters.  So either they were really good at guesstimating or they tried making everything to scale.  Plugging in the hotel tower and I get close to 99 meters which us up there or taller than Landmark.  Okay, next thought.  How about a sky bridge connecting The ES hotels and the convention center??  I also hope the green space on the cantilevered section is open to the public in some way.  This looks like it would be a cool place to hang out.  Would be nice to have a restaurant on that first residential level where the green roof is that had outdoor seating.

Edited February 20, 2020 by gvegascple

[ausrutherford]

Am I the only one that hopes the old house that the Academy Bridge basically sits upon is saved?

[apaladin]

Yes 

[gman430]

13 hours ago, gvegascple said:

 The Embassy Suites expansion looks tiny in the above pic, I guess its farther back and a street over. Its a lot harder to tell in these for me.   I am ready to see some real plans for this.  I keep going back to the plain rendering, mostly because its more optimistic :-)    District West is off in the corner of the rendering and I did some scale comparison calculations and it does appear to be around 19.5 meters if ES is assumed to be 31.5 meters.  So either they were really good at guesstimating or they tried making everything to scale.  Plugging in the hotel tower and I get close to 99 meters which us up there or taller than Landmark.  Okay, next thought.  How about a sky bridge connecting The ES hotels and the convention center??  I also hope the green space on the cantilevered section is open to the public in some way.  This looks like it would be a cool place to hang out.  Would be nice to have a restaurant on that first residential level where the green roof is that had outdoor seating.

A sky bridge is planned to connect the two hotels across River Street. One of the renderings shows it.

Edited February 21, 2020 by gman430

[gvegascple]

9 hours ago, gman430 said:

A sky bridge is planned to connect the two hotels across River Street. One of the renderings shows it.

That is great, I love a good sky bridge :-)

[gvegascple]

I assume this house will not be here with the convention center.  It has a Charleston-Single look to it.  Is this a modern copycat or does it have some historical significance?

[Trey Cole]

It was the office for the G & N railroad

[gvegascple]

13 hours ago, ausrutherford said:

Am I the only one that hopes the old house that the Academy Bridge basically sits upon is saved?

I missed this post, I just posted the same thing! its it historically significant?  I like the idea of saving these (somehow, if significant) like we did with the Shoeless Joe and the Clinic.  Along with our public art and statues, its makes a nice historical trifecta and keeps up the flavor of Greenville.

23 minutes ago, Trey Cole said:

It was the office for the G & N railroad

Guessing it dates back to 20's then.  100 years old is a keeper to me.  Could make a cool mini railroad museum for kids to visit during school field trips...  The childrens park/playground near it could be updated to have a railroad theme or partial railroad theme ( its kind of weird right now but I still like it)

Edited February 21, 2020 by gvegascple

[GvilleSC]

Despite how the schematic views appear, I don't imagine that the house is actually in the way of the proposed project. It sits on a triangle of property by itself, and I sure hope it remains.