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Granby Tower


brikkman

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What surprises me the most is that they're still trying to lease retail space for this sucker. This was last verified 8/10/09. It makes me wonder that with the liens now lifted whether it will be easier for him to get financing for the remainder of the project? He just got $20 million worth of free construction which would reduce the overall total needed for a loan.

http://www.loopnet.com/property/14348421/515-Granby-St/

I hate keeping this thread alive, but Granby Tower was verified on Loopnet three days ago.

http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/MainSite/Listi...p;PgCxtDir=Down

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No, it's trying to leave 11k sq. feet of retail at $30/sf/ year

It might have some auto thing, but why wouldn't they disable it

The same reason it says it was built in 2008. Which apparently it was not. It is all automated, somebody just hasn't kept up with this stuff.

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That loopnet site is loopy. From a customer perspective I inquired about a space or something, and it emailed me, and in the email all of the links were trying to push me into paying a ton of money to get access again to the listings that were on it. Of course the firm that had put the listings on there PAID them to do so I presume.

If I were to loose my job or something I might just have to make one of those sites. Heh.

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  • 1 month later...

Gsa wants Granby Tower site

This project is officially dead and the feds want the site. At this point I don't really care anymore but this whole experience with the federal government has left a bad taste in my mouth. The fact is their actions are directly responsible for killing the project to begin with, and part of me wants to tell them to go packing. At the same time, I don't want to look at that hole in the ground any longer. I say give them the property, but closing Granby Street is an absolute non-starter. They would effectively kill that corridor though i'm not sure the feds particularly care if they do. <_< Another concern of mine is the Hampton Inn and Suites. Will the feds allow a tall building that close to their new courthouse?

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Gsa wants Granby Tower site

This project is officially dead and the feds want the site. At this point I don't really care anymore but this whole experience with the federal government has left a bad taste in my mouth. The fact is their actions are directly responsible for killing the project to begin with, and part of me wants to tell them to go packing. At the same time, I don't want to look at that hole in the ground any longer. I say give them the property, but closing Granby Street is an absolute non-starter. They would effectively kill that corridor though i'm not sure the feds particularly care if they do. dry.gif Another concern of mine is the Hampton Inn and Suites. Will the feds allow a tall building that close to their new courthouse?

I was just about to post this.

I'm on the fence with it. The hole really isn't appealing, but a courthouse? Why do we need two federal courthouses right next to each other & No way can they shut down Granby St. Build a pedestrian bridge or an underground walkway. Don't mess up what little connectivity we do have. This is going to take up quite a bit of developable land that we have downtown.

But does this mean that the Feds are trying to expand in Norfolk?

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Gsa wants Granby Tower site

This project is officially dead and the feds want the site. At this point I don't really care anymore but this whole experience with the federal government has left a bad taste in my mouth. The fact is their actions are directly responsible for killing the project to begin with, and part of me wants to tell them to go packing. At the same time, I don't want to look at that hole in the ground any longer. I say give them the property, but closing Granby Street is an absolute non-starter. They would effectively kill that corridor though i'm not sure the feds particularly care if they do. <_< Another concern of mine is the Hampton Inn and Suites. Will the feds allow a tall building that close to their new courthouse?

If I were the City/citizens who put money down on the Granby Tower, I would take the Federal Government to Court over the money they lost. At least then maybe the Courts might reconsider the location, I really dont mind them gaining the land but the prospect of closing off Granby and stopping the Hampton Inn is too much, the Federal Government is trying to kill development accross the entire area and it is frankly unacceptable.

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I would take a hole in the ground over letting GSA have the property. The Granby site will be built on eventually, why rush it and let GSA kill any chance for development north of Brambleton.

THe problem is that it looks like GSA will get the parcel no matter what over eminent domain, all that Gaddams can do is take the GSA to court over the amount of money he will get for it. However, filing a suit from the City of Norfolk to hopefully eat into the GSA's budget to make the tower alternative as a concession to dropping the suit would probably be one alternative, the City has plenty of evidence to drag a case through court for awhile.

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I think it is time to lock this thread, as Granby Tower is dead now:

http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_news/local_wavy_norfolk_granby_tower_project_officially_over_20091029

t was to be the premier address to live in Norfolk, but on Thursday night it was officially announced that the Granby Tower project was over. The Federal Government ordered the developer to hand over the property, or it will be seized. The Granby Tower was supposed to be completed in late 2007. Developer Buddy Gadams blames the government for threatening to take the land when he was trying to develop it, and then Wall Street collapsed.

However, what is with Andy Fox and laying all the blame on Gadams? He seems to skim over the involvement of the federal government and financial collapse as nothing but excuses! He is a horrible little man, and I cant help but get angry everytime he reports... :angry:

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Sad news but, expected for sure. To many issues and the economy problems didnt help at all. The worst of this all is our area has had some times and chances to shine and Granby Tower rep'd a chance to have a signature building downtown that tells big city visitors and cities like Charlotte were next! We needed this for local moral and national attention. Granby was and is a fantastic idea.Now The Westin is stalled and I think its dead as well. The economy crashing took at least 3 skyscrapers and more importantly jobs that would occupy these buildings and tax dollars away from Norfolk and the metro!!! Granby would have attracted wealthy people from up and down the coast, at least south to Carolina and north to NY State! Oh, well! Here we go, lets hope the next project isnt a bust and we get The Westin!! L.G.N.M

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  • 9 months later...

I'm really not worried about what the Feds are going to build there. I was looking at some fairly recent federal courthouses, and they're not that bad architecturally. Would it have been nice to have a residential development? Yes. But this expansion will be better than nothing.

I think the worst thing that could happen is that the new building will try to be to "matchy-matchy" with the old building.

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I'm really not worried about what the Feds are going to build there. I was looking at some fairly recent federal courthouses, and they're not that bad architecturally. Would it have been nice to have a residential development? Yes. But this expansion will be better than nothing.

I think the worst thing that could happen is that the new building will try to be to "matchy-matchy" with the old building.

True...But I think the worst that could happen is that the Feds close off Granby Street against the wishes of Norfolk in order to have their own campus downtown, which is an option currently being discussed!!!! We need to protest the distruction of our original street grid.

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True...But I think the worst that could happen is that the Feds close off Granby Street against the wishes of Norfolk in order to have their own campus downtown, which is an option currently being discussed!!!! We need to protest the distruction of our original street grid.

This was the point I was trying to make in regards to Granby Street being in disarray. Ideas like that will continue to come down the pipe as they began to build. Its not just having a new federal court building, but everything that surrounds that. I wouldn't be surprised if they said Baxter’s would have to shut down and vacate based off some proximity rule or something. That has been my beef with the fed building and court house being on Granby when its basically entertainment and dinning. Now you throw this prominent component in the mix and you truly have a volatile situation. Too late now I suppose, but besides the city not making tax money off the land, its really going to shut down development on that corner.

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Trying to change the use of the tower during process to part office and part condos would of been a year delay and a huge cost because of that...if he couldnt of gotten the condo tower to work, there would of been no way he could of gotten this to work.

Also, I doubt the courts want to be in any building that is mix used...the only office tenants that they would of gotten when it came to the courts might of been companies that are independent of the federal government that needed office space near the courthouse...law firms and such.

I'm not usually that dick that likes to correct posters' spelling and grammar (seeing as how mine sucks) but using the word "of" instead of "have" made reading this post really painful. What we hear is close to "of" but it is a just a lazy pronunciation of "have". For example: "should have" sounds like "should ave" and can be taken as "should of". It should be written as “should have”.

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BTW, new Federal courthouses are usually really nice. The one in Richmond is across Broad Street from the National (our Norva)and across 7th there is the newly opened center Stage performing arts center. While something more mixed use may have added some more excitement to the area, the courthouse being there doesn't diminish the bar/show crowd and it adds a lot of architectural interest to the block.

Granby Tower was a great looking building. It would take me a while to get over that loss too.

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BTW, new Federal courthouses are usually really nice. The one in Richmond is across Broad Street from the National (our Norva)and across 7th there is the newly opened center Stage performing arts center. While something more mixed use may have added some more excitement to the area, the courthouse being there doesn't diminish the bar/show crowd and it adds a lot of architectural interest to the block.

Granby Tower was a great looking building. It would take me a while to get over that loss too.

I don't think anyone on this forum is trying to make the claim that the new building the feds put on the site will be ugly, what the 2 posters were trying to say is that the feds closing off a portion of the street will effectively kill that section of downtown in a similar way that Norfolk did when it closed Granby Street to cars (except on a much smaller scale). Also for re-clarification, this will not be our only federal courthouse, but an annex of the existing Federal Courthouse and Post Office built in the earlier part of the 20th century (one of my personal favorites downtown).

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I'm not usually that dick that likes to correct posters' spelling and grammar (seeing as how mine sucks) but using the word "of" instead of "have" made reading this post really painful. What we hear is close to "of" but it is a just a lazy pronunciation of "have". For example: "should have" sounds like "should ave" and can be taken as "should of". It should be written as “should have”.

ummm, thanks for correcting a post that was written almost a year ago...I would take the criticism into consideration if I even still remember even writing that post. For all I know, I could have been mildly drunk when I wrote that.

BTW, new Federal courthouses are usually really nice. The one in Richmond is across Broad Street from the National (our Norva)and across 7th there is the newly opened center Stage performing arts center. While something more mixed use may have added some more excitement to the area, the courthouse being there doesn't diminish the bar/show crowd and it adds a lot of architectural interest to the block.

Granby Tower was a great looking building. It would take me a while to get over that loss too.

No one is question the issue of the architecture of what this Fed expansion could be, the issue is with the fact that they now own property on both sides of Granby and could easily flex their government muscles and force the city to close that block of Granby down and create a "bs" plaza on it, which would in turn hurt any chance of future development north of Brambleton because this would be seen as more of a road block than anything, it would also turn the downtown portion of Granby into a limited access neighborhood street basically which is the wrong thing to do with a downtown commercial street.

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Closing Granby would be a travesty. There is a better public safety argument for leaving the road open. Is there really any chance that they would do that? There are a few Federal properties around here and they haven't closed down any streets as a result (did narrow 5th beside the Federal Reserve Bank but the road is still open to traffic).

The existing Fed building (or is it a post office?) on Grandy is probably my favorite building in Norfolk. It has such a "big city" feel to it. Great building.

Again, sorry for the grammar lesson. I just commented so that the person who wrote it wont do it in the future. It may have never occurred to the poster that it was wrong because if one were to read it aloud, it would sound OK. I grew up in Tidewater (in the marsh) and my spelling and grammar suffered greatly because of it. That's not a comment on the local education (which was great)but on how people talk. I tried to write things as I heard them which meant adding a bunch of extra syllables(ex: moderen, patteren etc.) and did the "of" instead of "have" too.

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I grew up in Tidewater (in the marsh) and my spelling and grammar suffered greatly because of it. That's not a comment on the local education (which was great)but on how people talk. I tried to write things as I heard them which meant adding a bunch of extra syllables(ex: moderen, patteren etc.) and did the "of" instead of "have" too.

Sorry that some of us here have accents which only adds to our culture and identity even more. I don't know if that is what you were trying to say with that post or not, but not everyone in this part of the country that has a Southern/Tidewater accent is backwards. In fact that's only a small percentage.

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Two issues here:

1. We are not getting a courthouse. We are getting an "annex". It would be better if they vacated the old post office building and just built the courthouse to stand alone. Alas, they want their cake and get to eat it too. FEDS.

2. They may try to block off other sections of other streets too. All in the name of "safety". Which stands to reason, if safety is really a concern, why not build on some cheaper, secure suburban gated site that has little to no public access? Oh right... then the judges could not walk to the bars and restaurants after a hard day of "work".

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