Biltmore Village developments

[orulz]

Whoops, thanks for correcting the link.

 

I'm pretty sure that while the commercial building is in the historic district, the apartment is not so there probably isn't much that can be done. And it will be right next to this so I don't think it will be too bad.

[orulz]

A couple of new developments in Biltmore Village have cropped up.

 

The old Whitaker Hill site, about 14 acres, has been sold and submitted to the Technical Review Committee for conditional rezoning from Urban Village to Urban Place. Both zones call for 64 units per acre which would be huge. I believe Urban Place allows taller buildings in exchange for better urban design requirements. The project is called "Biltmore Village Apartments".

 

Just across the railroad tracks, at the corner of Thompson and Stoner, a 254 unit apartment project called "River Mill Lofts" has also been proposed and posted on the Development Mapper. Somewhat underwhelming from a design standpoint, it looks like they will be piling up dirt to raise it about 10 feet above the level of Thompson Street (1995ft elev. street grade, -> 2005 ft level ground floor) and thus out of the flood plain. The site actually already has a pretty substantial pile of dirt on it but I'm not really sure how tall it is.

[rooster8]

Not a lot to report, but I did see some sort of soil testing at the Thompson and Stoner site last week.

[orulz]

Ashvegas has an article on the old Whitaker Hill site (Fairview & Stoner). The project has been revised to include 309 residential units, 5 live-work units, and 9742 square feet of retail.

 

The initially submitted design basically handled the topography by plopping a retaining wall between the building and Fairview Road and putting buildings on top of it. The revised design actually seems to do a pretty good job facing Fairview Road, stepping the retail and live/work entrances along with the hill.

 

The neighborhood has some admittedly fairly legitimate concerns about traffic - Fairview Road is narrow and pretty busy already. But the solution in my mind is not to deny developments but rather to improve the infrastructure. Implementing the Dykeman Riverway between Biltmore and South Tunnel would certainly go a long way. Putting an I-240 interchange near the Riverway/South Tunnel intersection would be another big step. Connecting River Hills Road to Glendale might help, too.

 

Here is a map of my suggested improvements.