Crescent Stonewall Station

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, J-Rob said:

The fat bottom along 277 is as bland and boring as it gets.  I am afraid the Great Wall of Charlotte (can't remember which UPer called it that)  won't age well.  I am interested to see if the art installation offsets the blandness of the Great Wall.

If you guys want to know what the wall art is going to look like. Check out the Ad on the side of Stonewall Station. That graphic motif in the middle shouldn't be too far off. Also these items below should be a good hint too.

[AP3]

I like the tower itself. Just not the rest.

I wish the southern facing side looked like the northern side.


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[jtmonk]

Why does that wall art give me a 90's nickelodeon vibe? 

[Windsurfer]

Should just go ahead and make it a climbing wall for their future tenants. 

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, AP3 said:

I wish the southern facing side looked like the northern side.


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Yea I find it super weird that the better sides of the buildings face INTO downtown. 

[KJHburg]

Went by the leasing office today (not for me) and they have leased 58 apartments which is pretty good for just opening.  The occupied apartments for right now face Stonewall Street.  Couple of photos from today and yes there is an elevator in the glass stairwell and photos of the retail space on the platform.  Maybe a coffee shop would do good here?  One photo shows the view from the patio above Whole Foods.  

[KJHburg]

One more thing I learned today at SS apartments is that they do have direct access to Stonewall Street from a door down from the parking garage entrance called their concierge entrance or something. I will look for it next time I am up there.  This is in addition to their entrance to the SS Lynx platform atop the Whole Foods. 

 

Found this construction webcam of the Home2Suites on the Doradus Partners website https://app.oxblue.com/open/Doradus/h2scharlotte

Edited February 24, 2018 by KJHburg

[CharlotteWkndBuzz]

^nice pics, think I will head over there tomorrow and check out the area.  I have no idea what will go in that retail area but was thinking of something that would attract ppl but not be too complicated. Just my thought, but I think something like a Tea Fusion Cafe would do well. They have mason jar mixers, fresh slushies, special teas and coffees and bubble tea. And a simple selection of banh mi sandwiches. I imagine a quick place like this would be great for the office workers and a cool place to grab something and relax in the plaza. Something unique to uptown needs to go in this location and I think the banh mi and bubble tea aspect would attract a lot of foot traffic. 

[KJHburg]

Stonewall Station this morning from afar. 

[Cadi40]

You look at some parts and you say "This isn't THAT bad" And then you look at others and you wish it was destroyed. The Parking Garage is horrendous, And I hate the wing of Apartments riding the freeway, I like the main building however.

[TheOneRJ]

19 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Stonewall Station this morning from afar. 

This could easily pass as a hospital from this angle. 

[UPNoDa]

Cadi40 you are spot on...

This thing is awful.  Would painting the facade vertically with a deep red on the balcony elevations give this thing some pizazz?

Also,  they should install decorative screens on that monstrosity of a garage.

 

[15895]

That is a bad angle but an angle I don’t think many will see except from the businesses along Morehead. The other angles look fine. Or else my eyes are too busy scanning from Regions to DEC, to BofA to the new townhomes on SouthEnd and the other surroundings. 

[Cadi40]

They could literally paint the parking garage any color, add a few modern metal rods going down the side, And it would look a 100 times better.

[NY+SC=NC]

For starters, I agree. The tower isn't bad and yes the rest is... bless your heart worthy, but what this project has done for the "feel" of the area, I absolutely love. Every project doesn't or maybe shouldn't be a postcard model in itself. This is a building/complex that adds a very "why did they put that there?" urban feel. There are loads of buildings like this is New York and even Atlanta in my opinion. I chose those cities because one is the model and the other the competition. Again, in my opinion.

[Guest]

They could literally paint the parking garage any color, add a few modern metal rods going down the side, And it would look a 100 times better.

You know the garage will be completely shielded with an architectural skin right? It’ll be blue, green and teal, and will undulate gently with interlocking pieces and have perforated metal. It won’t look like a garage. We will just see if it’ll look tooooooo different.

 

 

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Cadi40 you are spot on...

This thing is awful.  Would painting the facade vertically with a deep red on the balcony elevations give this thing some pizazz?

Also,  they should install decorative screens on that monstrosity of a garage.

 

They literally are... they are spending millions to shield 20,000 sq feet of wall space.

 

 

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[KJHburg]

from a pretty in depth article about how Stonewall Station came together but this is very interesting and from this group seems to be the major problem the parking garage:

""And it was the parking garage that presented one of the earliest challenges.  Geotechnical surveys did not reveal the extent to which rock was present near the surface where underground parking was planned, says Brad Ellinwood, structural engineer for the project with Atlanta-based EM Structural. Developers in uptown Charlotte have long encountered pesky underground rock formations. When the Duke Energy Center was built in 2009, contractors excavated nearly 400,000 cubic yards of rock to make room for the eight-story underground parking deck. “The first iterations of design had parking going multiple levels below,” Ellinwood says. But completing that design would have required blasting stone near the light-rail train tracks.  “When we really knew where the rock was and saw what it would cost to blast it, it was not only the price but the risk of doing something that would harm the train tracks that we decided to change the design,” Ellinwood says.  The architects were back at the drawing board before construction could even start, creating a design that wrapped parking around the Whole Foods store above ground.  “It probably cost us in the ballpark of a month, but it could have been worse,” Miller says. ""

From a Business Journal subscriber article https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2018/02/22/how-uptown-s-stonewall-station-came-together.html

This also explains why Tryon Place and Legacy are all going above ground with parking decks for no one wants a boulder flying into 277 or worse into another tower during blasting. 

Edited February 26, 2018 by KJHburg

[CLT>___]

8 hours ago, KJHburg said:

from a pretty in depth article about how Stonewall Station came together but this is very interesting and from this group seems to be the major problem the parking garage:

""And it was the parking garage that presented one of the earliest challenges.  Geotechnical surveys did not reveal the extent to which rock was present near the surface where underground parking was planned, says Brad Ellinwood, structural engineer for the project with Atlanta-based EM Structural. Developers in uptown Charlotte have long encountered pesky underground rock formations. When the Duke Energy Center was built in 2009, contractors excavated nearly 400,000 cubic yards of rock to make room for the eight-story underground parking deck. “The first iterations of design had parking going multiple levels below,” Ellinwood says. But completing that design would have required blasting stone near the light-rail train tracks.  “When we really knew where the rock was and saw what it would cost to blast it, it was not only the price but the risk of doing something that would harm the train tracks that we decided to change the design,” Ellinwood says.  The architects were back at the drawing board before construction could even start, creating a design that wrapped parking around the Whole Foods store above ground.  “It probably cost us in the ballpark of a month, but it could have been worse,” Miller says. ""

From a Business Journal subscriber article https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2018/02/22/how-uptown-s-stonewall-station-came-together.html

This also explains why Tryon Place and Legacy are all going above ground with parking decks for no one wants a boulder flying into 277 or worse into another tower during blasting. 

Just to put a real world spin on this for the ones who ask why do we not bury all parking? Burying one floor of a mid to small sized garage in rock will cost roughly 3 million.  As you go deeper that 3 continues to grow with each level.  A garage the size of stonewalls could easily have been 6 - 8 mil per floor. 

I still wish we could bury them all but... $

Edited February 26, 2018 by JSquare

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, JSquare said:

Just to put a real world spin on this for the ones who ask why do we not bury all parking? Burying one floor of a mid to small sized garage in rock will cost roughly 3 million.  As you go deeper that 3 continues to grow with each level.  A garage the size of stonewalls could easily have been 6 - 8 mil per floor. 

I still wish we could bury them all but... $

It'd cost about $28M to bury all the parking. That said, you would be freeing up at least another 1.5 acres to development, so that could have been easily offset with building an additional use. 

[jtmonk]

7 minutes ago, ricky_davis_fan_21 said:

It'd cost about $28M to bury all the parking. That said, you would be freeing up at least another 1.5 acres to development, so that could have been easily offset with building an additional use. 

Yeah, I could see that working out, and I bet Crescent would have considered that if they didn't have so many projects going on at the moment.  By that I mean  Crescent wouldn't want to put another use here, such as office space, because it would compete with other Crescent projects, namely Tryon Place right up the road.  But that's just my assumption, I'm sure there's more to it than that. 

[QCxpat]

On 2/24/2018 at 9:21 PM, Cadi40 said:

You look at some parts and you say "This isn't THAT bad" And then you look at others and you wish it was destroyed. The Parking Garage is horrendous, And I hate the wing of Apartments riding the freeway, I like the main building however.

Here's a link to a comprehensive assessment of the Stonewall Station Superblock, written by Clayton Sealey for CharlotteFive.   Excellent critical analysis with photos.

This story appeared at C5 on 02/06/2018.   

Link:    https://www.charlottefive.com/novel-stonewall-station-wrong/  ("What the Design for Uptown's Stonewall Station Got Wrong - and Right")

Excerpts re: the garage: 

"The drawback of having a strong mix of uses in Charlotte is the parking requirements.  This issue has created all of Charlotte's 'Superblocks.'  Thanks to the need to house the vehicles of shoppers, residents and hotel guests, Novel Stonewall Station features a 120-foot-tall parking garage with a 1.4 acre footprint.  In places it sticks a full 2-3 stories above the apartments on all sides of the complex." 

"We will have to wait to see the finished product to judge the parking deck.  Crescent has sunk a big chunk of change into masking this unfortunate, but necessary addition.  They've brought in Marc Fornes, a well-known Brooklyn-based architect known for creating stunning and vibrant architectural sculptures / forms.  I'd imagine, by looking at the artist's work, that the 277-facing elevation could be dramatically changed."

"I think the general public's thirst for parking is what's ultimately hampering projects like Stonewall Station.  Creating meaningful, architecturally striking projects is nearly impossible when you have to account for the cost, and space required to develop thousands of parking spaces.  It's vital that the city takes a hard look at its parking requirements, and decides what the future holds for land development.  Charlotte is a city trying desperately to become more pedestrian friendly, and that cannot continue while allowing automobile-centric policy to run rampant."

Edited February 27, 2018 by QCxpat

[KJHburg]

Which is the great wall of Charlotte here in  uptown or up in NoDa along the BLE?  Is any landscaping planned for the 2nd photo? 

[CharlotteWkndBuzz]

Forgot to mention this in my earlier post, but are yall's opinion on this?  When I checked this place out last weekend, I noticed there is a barrier (large planters) separating the plaza and the plaza level apartments.  And the platform level apartments are completely separated from the light rail side (would have to fix some elevations).  I think the ground level (Plaza/light rail platform) apartments could have had a  unique appeal, in that they truly were directly connected to the plaza/platform, like the apartments near Bland St.  However, those living plaza level, could always walk across the planters, but there is no pathway...planters block entire plaza and apartment patio.  Perhaps it's for some separation/security purposes, but I just think they could have rented those units out as "premium" units with direct access.  Thanks to KJH's previous pics, better helps illustrate: 

[KJHburg]

^^^ I have noticed that too. I think there might be concerned to have a train platform that is crowded (and sometimes it is) and having people wander over to your patio.  I would say it was a security privacy issue. These apartments would just have to go out their front doors into the hallway to the plaza in the 1st photo above.  

[AP3]

Just now, KJHburg said:

^^^ I have noticed that too. I think there might be concerned to have a train platform that is crowded (and sometimes it is) and having people wander over to your patio.  I would say it was a security privacy issue. These apartments would just have to go out their front doors into the hallway to the plaza in the 1st photo above.  

I was waiting for an outbound train last week at the stop and assumed there was a path connected to the apartments on the other side of the railing allowing for direct access.  It could be appealing having direct access from an apartment right there, but now that it's not connected it's just odd.  They should have made this area amenity space or retail fronting the station, with direct access to the station.   What a waste.