Patrick Henry Place Progress

[johnk812]

This project is meh to me. The brick frontage looks good, too bad it's surrounded by 3 sides of vinyl, which is the part visible from the freeway. It seemed to me earlier that they were starting to head in the right direction, unfortunately it looks like i'm going to have to retract my earlier retraction. I'm not fond of the Chesapeake style hotels either. This project is a shadow of what was originally put on paper.

[vdogg]

Haha, not insulting Chesapeake, just the architecture of the hotels built in Chesapeake. That parking lot would look at home near any Walmart. The original goal of this project was to be one of urban design. Unfortunately, at least where the hotels are concerned, it has a decidedly suburban quality. I would have preferred all buildings in this project be flush with the sidewalks, with some nice streetscaping added in for good measure.

[PeninsulaKiddo]

I drive by this project every day on the Interstate (luckily for my urban voyeur perspective, traffic is usually at a standstill on 64 at Jefferson, so I get to look for quite awhile........ ). But, I agree that's it's just sort of "meh". The density isn't that great thanks to the enormous parking lot(s), and the vinyl siding looks... cheap from the interstate. I don't know how else to word it.

I was thinking the other day, it would've been really cool to connect it over to where the Wal Mart currently stands - build a two-zone development with commercial and residential interests where PHPlace is currently going up and an "urban-inspired" office park where the Wal Mart stands (it's the crappiest Wal Mart in the history of Wal Mart, which is quite a dubious distinction). Something architecturally-similar to L'Enfant in D.C., but low-rise so as not to impede the airport? That would've been awesome.

But we get a courtyard Marriott desperately trying to be 'out of the box.' The fronts of the apartments and townhomes look great, nice detailing, all that jazz; I just wish all the buildings were somewhat cohesive or at least up to that par.