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Grandville Castle Apartments


mgreven

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3 hours ago, TheSutterKing said:

Any new pics or advancements on this project?

I drive by it 2 or 3x a week on the highway. It looks pretty much the same but I did notice a big red steel metal tower structure running up the North face of it that I thought was the beginning of a tower crane. I did wonder how they were going to erect the corner towers, which seem that they'll be higher than the cranes can reach. 

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On 2/11/2017 at 11:38 AM, arcturus said:

Curious, how deep are some of those pits?

My guess would be around 10 feet given the depth of most of the gravel lakes in the area, but it is possible that it could be a lot more if the gravel vein went deep right there.
(Also, it could be a lot less if they used to have a plant there and ran the sludge back into the pond.) When they dug those, they probably used a dragline crane which can go quite deep.  If you've never seen one in operation, hit up Youtube. It's basically a dredge incorporating a giant, heavy bucket on a cable attached to the crane boom.  Toss it out into the lake and drag it back full of material.  You can basically go as deep as your cable is long.

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On 2/27/2017 at 8:34 PM, crinzema said:

 

Nope, just 250+ geolocated photos from 250+ different angles from a drone

Below is what it looks like from the 14th Story looking towards 28th street.

Screen Shot 2017-02-27 at 8.41.03 PM.png

Maybe it’s because I don’t like the idea of the castle or the location in the first place, but in my imagination at least, these representations look like what it looks like forty years into the future after it falls into disrepair and abandonment.

This is how I see the timeline:

  • The castle opens to a lot of excitement because it’s new and tall even if it is somewhat garish.
  •  After a few years many of the residents realize that it is kind of isolated and has no street life.  A few of them take urban planning classes and after reading one of the classics, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, they realize that it resembles the stand alone high rise public housing towers that Jane Jacobs describes negatively.
  • Now that the newness has worn off, even those that don’t read (let alone read Jacobs) kind of get bored and start moving away to newer or more interesting places.
  • So there are a lot of apartments to fill and the LAND Corporation can fill them if they lower the rent and start taking in section 8 clients.
  • They start cutting corners on maintenance and at the same time some of the new tenants are a little rough on the property, and then even poor people start moving away.
  • Finally income trails expenses and the property is abandoned   
Edited by walker
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I see nothing but prosperity here. It is so close to millennium park. Close to "real" shopping. It has much quicker access to lake Michigan than anything downtown. Crime will be significantly lower. Prices will be more affordable. This place is so ideal, I'm considering it for myself. I would take a bet, that that corner area (Wilson and 28th street), will modernize extraordinarily quickly. The increased tax revenue from this project, will fix the few things wrong with the area, making it an even more attractive area. This is a win win win. I'm not in favor of any utopia that requires force, regulation, zoning, flaming activists, and of course... a rare flower only on "bad developments".

Edited by crinzema
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