Broadway and 1st Condos

[civitas]

I like how you've taken architectual ques from the old church. Looks nice. If the acutual project does the same as in your Sketchup images then this will be a good example of reusing old buildings.

Actually the forms are from the Nederveld sketch.

We've defended the church and suggested that the southern blockface is worth favoring, but other than that, Nederveld has done a very nice job with the block.

[civitas]

Civitas' layout could easilly reproduce this look:

Whereas the original would not. I think I really like the layout civitas has.

Good analogy tSlater.

[Allison Slater]

That shot right there just screams "live in me" and really creates a more grandeur, welcoming, yet private entrance all at the same time.

[torgo]

hey civitas, do you use the free or the professional version of sketchup? (I assume its the professional one)

[civitas]

hey civitas, do you use the free or the professional version of sketchup? (I assume its the professional one)

Professional.

[GRDadof3]

Excellent 3d rendering civitas!

Looking at the outside of the apartment building, it looks like it possibly has some decent ceiling heights, and the windows are well placed and tall:

Funny how two buildings I've passed by probably 100 times all of sudden look so intriguing.

[tamias6]

The free version of sketchup is very powerful for what it is. Even though its no Cinema 4D or Lightwave it makes easy work of creating good looking buildings, landscaping, furniture, etc. The pro version has some additional tools to create and work with terrains, basic animations, and also allows exporting and importing verious 3-D fomats, Autocad, and outputs hi-res printable image files and renders to common video formats. The fun part of sketchup is exporting to Google Earth. But the handy part is doing conceptual work qucikly and easily. Even though the program does have its own personality, the learning curve is cake walk esp. if you all ready know how to use a graphics program like Adobe Illustrator, or an image editor like Adobe Photoshop.

I love the user interface of this program. If Google would continue to develope and evolve Sketchup into somthing as powerful as Lightwave or Cenima 4D while maintaining ease of use, then Sketchup would be one heck of a killer app.

[Rizzo]

The free version of sketchup is very powerful for what it is. Even though its no Cinema 4D or Lightwave it makes easy work of creating good looking buildings, landscaping, furniture, etc. The pro version has some additional tools to create and work with terrains, basic animations, and also allows exporting and importing verious 3-D fomats, Autocad, and outputs hi-res printable image files and renders to common video formats. The fun part of sketchup is exporting to Google Earth. But the handy part is doing conceptual work qucikly and easily. Even though the program does have its own personality, the learning curve is cake walk esp. if you all ready know how to use a graphics program like Adobe Illustrator, or an image editor like Adobe Photoshop.

I love the user interface of this program. If Google would continue to develope and evolve Sketchup into somthing as powerful as Lightwave or Cenima 4D while maintaining ease of use, then Sketchup would be one heck of a killer app.

I disagree. Sketchup will never, and should never be a Lightwave or Cinema. Sketchup is powerful in its own context and is currently The Killer in its use. The reason why it is so powerful is because of the design process. What sketchup does for people who use it in design is that it provides a "sketched" end product. This IS very important in design and concept meetings where the customer or enduser needs to feel as if the concept isn't set into stone. The sketched look opens both parties up to more of an atmosphere of collaboration. It's amazing in how a nice clean render of a building versus a sketched one can do for the design process and customer interaction.

Civitas, great interpretation.

[civitas]

I disagree. Sketchup will never, and should never be a Lightwave or Cinema. Sketchup is powerful in its own context and is currently The Killer in its use. The reason why it is so powerful is because of the design process. What sketchup does for people who use it in design is that it provides a "sketched" end product. This IS very important in design and concept meetings where the customer or enduser needs to feel as if the concept isn't set into stone. The sketched look opens both parties up to more of an atmosphere of collaboration. It's amazing in how a nice clean render of a building versus a sketched one can do for the design process and customer interaction.

Civitas, great interpretation.

Thanks.

I agree. I'm old enough to still have scars from cutting foam-core board into "massing models". We built them at fairly small scales to check proportion, form, relationships, etc. ShetchUp is infinately better for the same purpose. Throw in a car or two and a handful of trees and people and you have something that really looks good - and no more X-Acto knife cuts.

[Veloise]

Excellent 3d rendering civitas!

Looking at the outside of the apartment building, it looks like it possibly has some decent ceiling heights, and the windows are well placed and tall:

Funny how two buildings I've passed by probably 100 times all of sudden look so intriguing.

Jeff, who gets the invoices for my site visit time, digital photos, and mileage???

[yes, I have collected mileage for pedalling!]

[GRDadof3]

Jeff, who gets the invoices for my site visit time, digital photos, and mileage???

[yes, I have collected mileage for pedalling!]

You guys kill me. I don't have anything to do with ownership of this site. I just help keep things interesting and engaging (and weed out the trolls), and I don't get paid one dime.

[tamias6]

I disagree. Sketchup will never, and should never be a Lightwave or Cinema. Sketchup is powerful in its own context and is currently The Killer in its use. The reason why it is so powerful is because of the design process. What sketchup does for people who use it in design is that it provides a "sketched" end product. This IS very important in design and concept meetings where the customer or enduser needs to feel as if the concept isn't set into stone. The sketched look opens both parties up to more of an atmosphere of collaboration. It's amazing in how a nice clean render of a building versus a sketched one can do for the design process and customer interaction.

Civitas, great interpretation.

Now that I think about it, your right. Sketchup hits its intended target. Cinema 4D and Lightwave are infamously difficult to learn and use becuase of the shear depth of these apps. Plus the user interfaces of such apps are designed by geeks for geeks in mind. I just wish some software company out there created a 3-D app as powerful as Lightwave or Cinema 4D that had Sketchup's instant feedback and ease of use. Anyway, I love sketchup, so much so that I may include the pro version in the conceptual stages of my workflow to quickly throw down ideas and export what I like to Lighwave to be further developed.

[joeDowntown]

Great sketches Civitas. It really brings life to the block and shows how nice it would be if they retained the church and apartment building (was this the original Rectory? Anyone have details on the building?).

You are right, the Nederveld plans are nicely done also. Keeping the existing buildings would give this development such nice character. And they could drop a Starbucks in there from my morning commute to the office (from my swanky 2nd story loft with stained-glass windows.

Joe

[Prankster]

And some facade variety so it doesn't look like a wall of little boxes.) Couldn't hurt to throw 'em a sketch-up or two.

But isn't that what row houses are? Visiting any big city, the uniformity of blocks of these houses is what stands out the most.

But, I am all for incorporating the church into the design. Unique, historic structures like those are too cost prohibitive to be replicated in todays world.

[Veloise]

On my way to the other significant project just up the street, I had some time to spare. Stopped by the West Grand neighborhood org, right across Broadway from Union Square. It turns out this was the ticket-selling group from the Taste of GR event, where I volunteered because it looked like fun (and it was).

Nola Jenner-Steketee said I could quote her. (I've taken to handing out my cards and writing the clickable route to get here on the reverse side.) Nola, feel free to jump in if I've mis-remembered anything.

WGNO is happy to see yet another condo project being proposed. They were not aware that the church sale had occurred, and do not yet have a position on saving the building(s). She said that the father came to them asking for help, so they arranged to have it and the adjacent building (former nunnery) evaluated.

Nunnery needs much work to be brought up to code; it has cloth wiring. A wall is leaning in. Church needs some work. I said what if a condo buyer wants to throw $200k at it? Apparently that would not be sufficient to restore the nunnery using licensed contractors. (Many retired ones in the 'hood will work for much less, but the City wants to see current licenses.)

Demolition begins!

[joeDowntown]

Even if the nunnery isn't up to code, most of the building that have been rehabbed over the last decade were probably not fit for occupancy. Eyeballing the size of the building, it looks like you could fit 4 apartments/lofts on the 2nd floor and 1-2 commercial spaces down. I don't see this building being too cost prohibitive unless it is about to fall down (which I doubt). Who knows how many spaces the church could be converted in, but the size seems like you could easily fit 2-3 depending on the floorplan, with 2 being monster spaces (and probably much higher then the $290K range).

Just my uneducated guess.

Joe

[Mark Miller]

I can appreciate some of the comments made here. It is always encouraging to see this much excitement about new projects in our grand city.

In regards to the design of this site, Civitas, I personally like your design and there was a similar design in the early stages of the planning process.

The harsh realities of contemporary America are that when planning efforts such as these occur, we all must go through a painful entitlement process and give our design over to fire departments and traffic engineers and at the end of the day, when we have satisfied the demands of manuevering the largest piece of fire appartus through every inch of our site and proven to the traffic safety officials that there will be an uninterrupted flow of traffic as it relates to our site, then, and only then, can we proceed with trying to make decent places for people.

That is why everything seems so universally crappy, because we have turned over the design of our public realm, including its architecture, to fire departments and traffic engineers.

That is the tragedy of the American landscape as it stands today.

[Rizzo]

So why don't we change this? Create a consortium between architectural talent, saftey and engineering officials?

[GaryP]

Approved by the planning commission today

[CK1]

Approved by the planning commission today

I take it this was the biggest hurdle? Going to see dozers in there sometime soon?

[GaryP]

It's usually the biggest hurdle. They have to get city commission approval next...

[luma]

It sounds like they had a pretty wide range of support, both in letters and in people present for the meeting. I spoke briefly in support as did a couple other gentlemen and the board voted all in favor save one dissenter.

Also, it appears that they will be leveling the church.

[GaryP]

It sounds like they had a pretty wide range of support, both in letters and in people present for the meeting. I spoke briefly in support as did a couple other gentlemen and the board voted all in favor save one dissenter.

Also, it appears that they will be leveling the church.

They said something about 8 condos on the property that wouldn't be townhome style. Do you know where those would go?

[GR_Urbanist]

Also, it appears that they will be leveling the church.

Ugh!

Beautiful old church going to the wrecking ball.

McMansion, subdivision style project (no uniqueness).

Blue collar Neighborhood gets wiped out for more

[ccbarnes]

Ugh!

Beautiful old church going to the wrecking ball.

McMansion, subdivision style project (no uniqueness).

Blue collar Neighborhood gets wiped out for more