hammond2003

Zen koan: If you drop a shopping center where no one shops, does it make a sound?

I just drove by HP this morning. I've driven through it before, but never along the Main Street side. I knew it was close to OPP, but didn't realize that it was also close to a lot of the hotels on Main Street. Also, I work on the West side of Main Street and other than office buildings, there's really not much else than the Park Shoppes, which is a hike to get to. There's going to be high demand during the day and in the evening. I think this project will impress a lot of people once it's complete, and be more successful than anticipated by many on this forum.

Please notice that my valet comments were in reference to Crew Fitness, which is in Memorial Heights/Washington. The 24 hour fitness has a parking garage attached to it for parking. Once the retail opens, I have no clue what they'll be doing.

FIT is horribly overpriced, the rate there is more in the neighborhood of $75/month. But it honestly depends on who you are or who you know when you go in to sign up. There are nice things about FIT, but the space can be small and crowded. Crew looked nice preopening, I haven't been in since. When talking to the owner, he mentioned that they planned on doing valet service for the parking because of the limited space in the complex. The 24 hour fitness is nice, although it's a little bit of a hike for me to get to, as FIT was closer. However, I signed up in November or December on one of their Thanksgiving/XMas/New Year's deals and got in at the no money down, $24/month price, with access to all clubs, sport and super sport. There are only like 2 ultra sport clubs in the country, so don't let a plan that doesn't give you access to those discourage you. The 24 hour fitness is going to bring some much needed foot traffic to that part of Midtown, I'm looking forward to the retail space in that building opening, and for the Mix to come along, even if it does have a stupid name.

http://www.urbanpartners.com/index.html

It's an absolute waste of space to let Midtown be developed as low rise, low density properties. Hopefully this building will help with the infill process in Midtown, with dense properties that will bring more individuals, more foot traffic, and more opportunities for street level business in the area.

I think not having a residential component of this project is fine. A lot of great cities have similar, successful developments that also to not have residential components. In addition, this project is close to the rail, close to Park One Plaza, and resembles structures that I've seen in Indianapolis and Chicago that have done just fine. I'm not ready to go negative on this project yet.