Lower Woodward Improvement Plan Renderings

[Allan]

I ran across these today, so I thought I'd post them here. This is set to be complete by February 2006.

[ColinSuperCool]

Whats with the paint job on the book tower

[Allan]

Whats with the paint job on the book tower

Haha, I think it's supposed to be exterior lighting. It would be great if it was lit up at night, just as long as they didn't use purple lights!

[ColinSuperCool]

I think they should give the whole building a good bath before they even think about lighting it up.

[wolverine]

I don't care for those renderings. I know that they are supposed to be showing the walls lit up, by why aren't the windows. Is Detroit going to become even more of a ghost town? Why is there only one person on Woodward?

[Allan]

Yeah. At any given time there is at least a few homeless people on the street, in addition to the "normal" pedestrians.

[wolfdawg54]

Have faith! It probably will not be that. The renderings are exactly that, images of what the buidings will look like. That first picture looks neat and will help the city a lot.

[Allan]

The first pic is of the Woodward Avenue streetscape. I was downtown Friday, and they have already started tearing up the street. I'm getting sick of all this construction though - getting around downtown can be rather tricky with practically every other street under construction!

[boo]

construction is really starting to piss me off too- i can't even stop at my usual haunt for coffee on my way to work in the morning!

as for the renderings, i am very bummed that they do not show any parallel parking on woodward. there is certainly room to narrow the sidewalks and add some space that will allow people to park near the businesses that are [hopefully] going to locate there.

[Allan]

I agree with you on both of those points. The construction is really frustrating. Everywhere you turn a road is under construction. I swear...every road I want to drive on is closed for construction. It is so annoying! Whose idea was it to repair all of downtown in a single summer anyway?!

I really believe the street parking would be a plus on Woodward. Having the wide sidewalks is nice, but there will never be enough pedestrian traffic to warrant sidewalks that wide. Besides, people may be more likely to patronize downtown businesses if they can park right out front, rather than having to park in a garage or lot several blocks away.

[ColinSuperCool]

well thats what we get for 20 years of neglect

[Allan]

Yep. Fortunately the rodas will be good for a few years after this summer's construction headaches are over. If only our winters weren't quite so harsh they might actually last.

[baldy]

Yeah, thanks to the road construction, I am out 1 tire Thankfully there was enough room in the parking garage to change it out.

As for the whole arguement about the weather causing the bad roads, I have never bought it. For one, there are many other states with the same climate that don't have roads like this.

Two, Michigan is one of the only states, if not the only one, that allows those multi axle trailers. The more axles, the more weight they can carry, the more load that gets transfered to the road.

Three, the State, County, and City, need to hold the construction companies accountable for their work. How about some sort of guarantee? Right now, the company can do a half a#@'d job, knowing that there will be more work if the future. Now I know its not really that simple, but it has to do with quality.

[Allan]

Michigan's share of Federal highway funding doesn't help either. For ever dollar the state pays to the Federal government, they get $.92 back. In other words, other states are getting our highway money.

I'm not disagreeing about the poor quality of the work done, but the bad climate still plays a factor...it just makes the poor construction of the roads fall apart that much quicker.

Ohio also gets less money back than they pay to the government. However, because they actually enforce their speed limits, they have the cash to keep their roads in much better shape than we can here in Michigan. In fact, Ohio gets less money per dollar back from the feds than Michigan does.

[dnast]

They also have things like tollways and weight limits