1059 and 1106 Wealthy St Redevelopment Projects

[uncus]

Word is that 1059 Wealthy is about to be redeveloped and some of you may wonder about the history of this property.  The site was originally the home of the Freyling and Mendels Greenhouse.  While i haven't been able to find a photo of the original building, the city archives has a photocopy of a postcard for the site.  If you look in the back center, you can see the tower of Trinity Methodist Church on the corner of Lake Drive and Calkins.   Sorry for the poor quality 

 

 

 

By the 1960 the site houses a car wash and gas pumps (wonder where those tanks are now).  These are photocopies from the city assessors photos and you can see the year written on the photos. It looks like the building only lasted from 1964-76

 

 

 

I believe the McDonald's was open on the site form 1979-1991.  You can see the original building in 1979 and then the later photos of the fenced in Playland.  The drive through was added latter.  I remember playing in that playland as a kid in the early 1980s  It was something like this.    Apparently crime closed the restaurant.  While i cannot verify this story, someone who lived in the neighborhood at the time said there was drug dealing and prostitution happening out of the back bathrooms, with armed gang members guarding  the back door.  After the McDondalds closed, the property was surrounding by barbed wire fencing for several years

 

 

 

 

The Property remained vacant for several years, but then was purchased in late 1990  with the hope of establishing a trade school on the property.  When that plan fell through, another plan to build the currently existing "strip mall" addition on the back was put forward.  The board of zoning appeals minutes for those meeting are pretty interesting, with numerous well know neighbors opposing the plan.  Some argued that retail space oriented that way would not be viable.  The addition went up, i don't think the space has ever been filled since.

 

 

I'm looking forward to what it coming next.  It is about time.

[john_denver]

Interesting history!

[The ATX]

Thanks for posting that.  I love histories of specific locations like that.

[organsnyder]

Thanks for this - I also really enjoy this sort of thing.

 

Are assessor's cards like that common for all properties in the city (including residential)? I've been trying to find out more about my house (built in 1916), and would love to be able to find something like that (I have a copy of the assessment from the 1930's, courtesy of the city archivist).

[GRDadof3]

Cool history. I totally remember when McDonald's Playlands were like that.

[uncus]

Thanks for this - I also really enjoy this sort of thing.

 

Are assessor's cards like that common for all properties in the city (including residential)? I've been trying to find out more about my house (built in 1916), and would love to be able to find something like that (I have a copy of the assessment from the 1930's, courtesy of the city archivist).

 

Yes they are!

 

Up until a few years ago, you could just go the the assessors office and sift though all of their filing cabinets unsupervised.  Almost all residential homes have photo from the 1930s and some of they have more recent photos.

 

Now all the records are stored at the city archives at the old public museum.  You need to make and appointment and they will pull the records that you request.  I think they even made me wear gloves.

[uncus]

The developers presented their primarily plans for the property at the East Hills Neighborhood Association board meeting tonight.   The main building it situated on wealthy and includes 7000 sq feet of retail on the ground floor with apartments on the second floor and office space on third.  The back (north end) of the lot has two banks of two story apartment buildings.  The one building has entrances facing Freyling, and the north building has entrances facing north.  There were some drawing presented, but below is a rough estimate of the basic layout. 

 

[john_denver]

Wonder what is in the middle?  Grass?

 

Also, was anything mentioned about the building across the street?  Did someone say a butcher shop?  Would that be a different developer?

[uncus]

Wonder what is in the middle? Grass?

Also, was anything mentioned about the building across the street? Did someone say a butcher shop? Would that be a different developer?

Parking lot with some planters in the middle, but they said the size was negotiable

Butcher shop is someone else. There were some images of the proposed facade, striping the wood off the front and restoring the brick and windows. It looked similar to the Wealthy st bakery/art of the table building with big glass front with surrounding brick.

[john_denver]

So the proposed butcher shop would go in the building across the street, on the left (if you are standing in the parking to of 1059)?

[GRDadof3]

So the proposed butcher shop would go in the building across the street, on the left (if you are standing in the parking to of 1059)?

 

Based on a FB post from a friend, it's 1106 Wealthy, the building just to the West of Community Media Center.

 

[mgreven]

East Hills Council shared these on FB.  This will really change that section of Wealthy if it all goes.  

This is the butcher shop proposed across the street...

[GRDadof3]

East Hills Council shared these on FB.  This will really change that section of Wealthy if it all goes.  

This is the butcher shop proposed across the street...

 

 

 

Wow that building looks like a combination of Wrights's Falling Water and a county jail. This is why nobody hires URS to do infill.

[uncus]

MLive is on it:

 

http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2015/01/1059_wealthy_street.html#incart_river

 

 

 

http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2015/01/louise_earl_butcher.html#incart_river

[uncus]

The owners of 1059 Wealthy say they are looking for input.  I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but i would really like to see both building facing a street, with parking integrated in the back on of each building. This could either be formal garages, or open parking (like the back of Uptown Village  on the corner of Diamond/Wealthy).     This would leave more rooms for green/infill and require less parking lot.  Maybe this is a better plan for town homes/condos than rental apartments.  It could also leave room for some green space and maybe a walk/bike path between Fryling and Calkins.  I bet the owner of the apartment buildings to the north would be willing to give a easement to make that easier. Something like this:

 

 

 

 

[GRCherr]

I love the post card!  Can we have a greenhouse there again, hehe?

[GRCherr]

Wow that building looks like a combination of Wrights's Falling Water and a county jail. This is why nobody hires URS to do infill.

I like what they did at Founder's Brewery

[LaFam]

Founders in da hood > Sweet!!!

[GRDadof3]

I like what they did at Founder's Brewery

 

That is true, I'll give them that. Out of the woodwork, two new people. Welcome!

[joeDowntown]

I don't mind the design. As always, it's all about the details (materials).

 

Joe

[twoshort]

Wow that building looks like a combination of Wrights's Falling Water and a county jail. This is why nobody hires URS to do infill.

 

I sort of agree though. It looks like a county or city building you'd find downtown GR.

[uncus]

New renderings on East Hill Web site:

 

http://easthillscouncil.org/news/1059-wealthy-street-se-feb-2-2015

[x99]

I don't mind the design. As always, it's all about the details (materials).

 

Joe

 

The design for the front building is so disjointed and awful that it makes Concept Design's work in the back look good.  And that isn't an easy thing to do.  This is not good work by any stretch of the imagination, and I suspect they have to know it.  Completely random gable treatments with an inappropriate boxed off eave return, formulaic and repetitive rooflines, all done in in weird, random colors.  That said, it probably suits this "historic" area of Dutch migrant worker tenement housing, since it looks cheap and crappy out of the gate.  Big quotes on the "historic". 

 

The fenestration on the front building in particularly is an ungodly mess.  Not that the rest of it has much redeeming value.  The sad thing is, Orion probably paid money for that design.  Egad.  Who would have thought that ICCF would set the high bar for urban infill?  Hilarious.  And depressing.  Timeless design has become a lost art.

 

Anyone taking bets whether the HPC tells them to go back to the drawing board?  They've been getting better at that lately (thank goodness). My money's on that drawing board.  If you asked me to draft up an argument for how this meets virtually any of the Standards they have to meet for infill in an Historic District, I'm not sure I could.  Unless you can write off "compatible" as meaning it's built to the sidewalk and has some windows in it.  In terms of architectural form, this thing doesn't have a common language with anything else on the street.  That awkward three story "feature" in the middle seems like it's intended to bridge to completely different buildings, one with a semi-traditional form on the right, and the other with an early-80s linear East Beltliney feel to it.  It's just weird for the sake of being weird. That said, the "building" on the far right on the East Hills website posting looks like it could almost pass muster if you put a decent cornice on top of the roofline, and cleaned up the window spacing.  The rest of it is just hopeless, as is the rendering posted above where the building on the right has some random chunk sliced out of the corner.

[organsnyder]

The design for the front building is so disjointed and awful that it makes Concept Design's work in the back look good.  And that isn't an easy thing to do.  This is not good work by any stretch of the imagination, and I suspect they have to know it.  Completely random gable treatments with an inappropriate boxed off eave return, formulaic and repetitive rooflines, all done in in weird, random colors.  That said, it probably suits this "historic" area of Dutch migrant worker tenement housing, since it looks cheap and crappy out of the gate.  Big quotes on the "historic".

 

I was going to write off your commments as "x99 being x99", but then I looked at the renderings. It is pretty awful.

[x99]

I was going to write off your commments as "x99 being x99", but then I looked at the renderings. It is pretty awful.

 

Hey, I actually do like some stuff!  I'm not always a curmudgeon.     That newish Uptown Village building on Wealthy is quite nice, actually.  I'm not 100% in love with the somewhat wonky roofline, but in general, it's a good example of how to get an infill project right.  This one looks like the residential chunk was drawn by a guy who couldn't give a rip, with the commercial chunk drawn by a guy on acid.