Venue Tower at the BOB - 20 Monroe Live - House of Blues/Live Nation Venue

[GRDadof3]

3 hours ago, gvsusean said:

not going to lie, I never thought this thing was going to happen..... what will the final height be?

Latest is 12 stories. #stubville 

So about twice as tall as 50 Monroe? 

 

That white double door on the Venue will be opened during events and will make an "alleyway" through to the other side, last I saw.

 

 

 

 

[GRDadof3]

13 hours ago, WMrapids said:

Whoops, posted it twice!

It's a cool picture, it deserves a double post. 

[Allison Slater]

I've been calling the residential tower of this "the cube"

[SupercityGR]

Stubville is better then a parking lot in Center City! Just glad to see it finally happening 

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[WMrapids]

25 minutes ago, ironyisadeadscene said:

Let there be light!

[ironyisadeadscene]

For today only! Haha

[GRDadof3]

On 3/29/2016 at 8:57 PM, GRDadof3 said:

Latest is 12 stories. #stubville 

So about twice as tall as 50 Monroe? 

 

That white double door on the Venue will be opened during events and will make an "alleyway" through to the other side, last I saw.

 

 

Just got back from vacation in Florida and I can see where the inspiration for the Venue cube came from. Everything down there built after 2006 looks like this. 

[john_denver]

^^^

Is that good or bad for us in GR?

It's certainly nothing inspirational or cutting/bleeding edge.

[GR_Urbanist]

I think most are all unsure, or at least not overly enthusiastic.

It's infill, so that's a plus. The Beer Garden certainly brings activity to the street, which is another plus. And the "Venue" helps fill in the need for a smaller event space that just adds to the entertainment scene.

The residential portion is a bit of a train wreck in design, though. 95% of that is the front entrance that just looks so stupid. Which explains why you never see a close-up image of it in any renderings.

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54 minutes ago, GR_Urbanist said:

I think most are all unsure, or at least not overly enthusiastic.

It's infill, so that's a plus. The Beer Garden certainly brings activity to the street, which is another plus. And the "Venue" helps fill in the need for a smaller event space that just adds to the entertainment scene.

The residential portion is a bit of a train wreck in design, though. 95% of that is the front entrance that just looks so stupid. Which explains why you never see a close-up image of it in any renderings.

To me, this is going to add alot of activity to the whole area, not that it lacks activity, but it's going to make that stretch of Monroe that much more busy. Which is good, because large stretches of downtown is very desolate. Not this area, so much, but it'll help fill the gap between the hotels and Ionia. 

 

Now, if we can only get more activity in the remaining GR PRESS lots to the north....

[GRDadof3]

20 hours ago, john_denver said:

^^^

Is that good or bad for us in GR?

It's certainly nothing inspirational or cutting/bleeding edge.

I don't know if it's good or bad, but it doesn't really seem to fit at all. Sometimes a modern design can purposely "not fit" and create a cool fabric to a city, but as I said, making it look like it belongs on a beach in Florida seems to be going in the wrong direction. And in case anyone hasn't noticed, buildings in downtown GR get dirty on the outside. I don't know if it's a mixture of weather elements, or dust, or smog? But a white exterior is going to look really dingy in just a short period of time, and will have to repainted regularly (like Florida condo tower stucco does), or cleaned pretty regularly. And since it's apartments and not condos, there's no association board to keep up on this maintenance.

It definitely will add to the life in that area though, I'm not arguing that. But any mixed use project there will add life. 

The earlier plans were a lot better, IMO, regardless of the height discussion.

 

[x99]

3 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

I don't know if it's good or bad, but it doesn't really seem to fit at all. Sometimes a modern design can purposely "not fit" and create a cool fabric to a city, but as I said, making it look like it belongs on a beach in Florida seems to be going in the wrong direction. And in case anyone hasn't noticed, buildings in downtown GR get dirty on the outside. I don't know if it's a mixture of weather elements, or dust, or smog? But a white exterior is going to look really dingy in just a short period of time, and will have to repainted regularly (like Florida condo tower stucco does), or cleaned pretty regularly. And since it's apartments and not condos, there's no association board to keep up on this maintenance.

That's pretty accurate.  50 Monroe was painted black because the prior white color got filthy.  But this whole thing... egad.  I haven't seen many designs for downtown in quite some time that I would say we could be proud of as a city.  It's all been ridiculously cheap, ugly, value-engineered stuff.  The era when Riverhouse was designed seems to have been the end of planning for decent buildings.  That's about the same time the unbuilt ottawa/pearl tower was proposed as well.  That stuff was at least ambitious and quite attractive.  That tower actually would have been something to be proud of.  Now I fear we've fallen prey to trend-of-the-moment stuff that's going to look cheap and tired in very, very short order.

 This looks awful and it hasn't even been built.  The Venue portion is at least attractive, but it looks like a first year architecture student at the cheapest architecture school in the country got hold of a book about Mies van der Rohe and thought it would be cool to design something that sort of looked like something he though Mies might have designed, but landing on top of another building.  It's completely bizarre, and not in a good way.  The same thing applies to Orion's last project at ArenaPlace with a giant hole in the side of the building.  Bizzare, and not in a good way.  That said, I think the GRAM looks like a hideous, unfinished bunker and that's apparently high architecture, so what do I know, anyway?  

[SupercityGR]

Build 50 more Mckay towers are we will be all good!

[joeDowntown]

Man, a lot of haters of everything on this forum lately . I bet people in other cities our size would be killing for all of this I fill, and the continued vibrancy being added to our city. Sure, we could pick apart every development but let's think of the bigger picture. 

Joe

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[GRDadof3]

12 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Man, a lot of haters of everything on this forum lately . I bet people in other cities our size would be killing for all of this I fill, and the continued vibrancy being added to our city. Sure, we could pick apart every development but let's think of the bigger picture. 

Joe

You have to admit Joe that it's not great. I'm rarely in the BOB area other than for the occasional arena event so it's really no skin off my back. 

[MJLO]

9 minutes ago, GRDadof3 said:

You have to admit Joe that it's not great. I'm rarely in the BOB area other than for the occasional arena event so it's really no skin off my back. 

I appreciate the infill, but think it's is probably a preview of what we can likely expect out of Orion for the "Warner Tower".

[organsnyder]

1 hour ago, GRDadof3 said:

You have to admit Joe that it's not great. I'm rarely in the BOB area other than for the occasional arena event so it's really no skin off my back. 

That's the crux of it, I think. No one is in that area, except for arena events and the Spectrum employees that work at 25 Ottawa. Besides the arena and BOB, the corner is also home to a parking ramp and the steam generation facility—not exactly a high-activity corner. While I'd appreciate a nicer look than what they're putting up, it's still going to be the only real destination at that corner for the foreseeable future.

[x99]

16 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Man, a lot of haters of everything on this forum lately . I bet people in other cities our size would be killing for all of this I fill, and the continued vibrancy being added to our city. Sure, we could pick apart every development but let's think of the bigger picture. 

Infill is all well and good, but it is still perfectly fair to question whether you are ending up with a desirable end product.  And isn't as if I feel the need to pan every last thing that is proposed.  If they built the original proposal for Pearl and Ottawa I would be jumping for joy. Heck, even the original proposal for Venue Tower was fairly good.  It was a modern building, but it was a fairly nice piece of architecture.  The redesign just flat out looks bad.  It's an endlessly cheapened, ugly little cube of a thing held up on popsicle sticks compared to the original proposal.

[GRDadof3]

4 hours ago, x99 said:

Infill is all well and good, but it is still perfectly fair to question whether you are ending up with a desirable end product.  And isn't as if I feel the need to pan every last thing that is proposed.  If they built the original proposal for Pearl and Ottawa I would be jumping for joy. Heck, even the original proposal for Venue Tower was fairly good.  It was a modern building, but it was a fairly nice piece of architecture.  The redesign just flat out looks bad.  It's an endlessly cheapened, ugly little cube of a thing held up on popsicle sticks compared to the original proposal.

If you read between the lines in the multitude of articles in the BJ about Orion and Concept Design, it sounds like they had trouble getting several of their projects to appraise. The only way to overcome a bad appraisal on a build job is strip a bunch of stuff (floors, design elements, etc.) out of the project, in my humble experience. 

[joeDowntown]

11 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

You have to admit Joe that it's not great. I'm rarely in the BOB area other than for the occasional arena event so it's really no skin off my back. 

Sure, I liked the earlier versions better (taller, better rooftop access), but I don't think this is as bad as everyone thinks. And I think it is good infill that will look pretty nice driving down Monroe or Fulton. 

And x99, you are just white noise to me. Hate, hate, [throw in architectural reference to sound wise], hate, hate, hate.  

I personally am excited about all the projects going up. I don't think a single project proposed will leave a nasty blemish on our city. Let's celebrate the good. 

Joe 

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Looks like things are progressing nicely 

[GR_Urbanist]

Even though we are all meh on the residents portion, the density it brings to that corner is amazing just at this point. It's going to look pretty massive when completed.