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Angostura

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Everything posted by Angostura

  1. Angostura
    Yes. Hausmann was a fascist.
  2. Angostura
    Most of Europe has SOME wide streets, but not ONLY wide streets. London: Oxford Rd and the Strand are 80-ft or so between facades. Surrounding streets are closer to 20-25 ft. Paris: the grand boulevards are around 100-ft between facades. Surrounding streets are closer to 20-25 ft. Rome: some main streets are 60-70-ft between facades, side streets as little as 10-15 ft. In EaDo, the blocks are 250-ft on a side, with 70-ft RoWs. That means 39% of land area is publicly owned. We put another 5% off limits by imposing a 5-ft building setback. So the other 56% has to generate enough tax base to maintain all that public infrastructure, AND pay for every other city service. Point is, not EVERY street needs to be this wide. My residential street in Heights (a numbered E-W street) sees about 20-30 cars per hour. Why design this street the same way, with the same width, as one that gets 500 cars per hour? By all means keep Clinton Dr's wide RoW, but the internal streets can and should be a lot narrower.
  3. Angostura
    Yes, please. Most of our streets are too damn wide. I'd like to see them do something like 20-ft between facades, but I doubt they'll be that ambitious. In EaDo, even with 5-ft setbacks 40% of land is not buildable. Hard to achieve decent density without high-rise construction unless you get the RoW widths down.
  4. Angostura
    Demo permit for Scootersmith (next building north from Barrio Antigo) issued yesterday. That property and the one next door (Chic Warehouse) were acquired last December by an entity called "Yale Grove".
  5. Angostura
    We get it in certain parts of town, but not at this level of density. This blockface, for example, has pretty much been completely changed over the last 10-12 years, one lot at a time. There are some impediments to this. When you have parking requirements at the dwelling unit level, it can be much more efficient to centralize the parking. Add in setbacks, especially lateral setbacks, and the buildable area goes way up when you consolidate. Barring those constraints, you could, in theory, take a city block. replat into 25-ft frontages, maybe run an alley or private driveway through the middle, impose some design guidelines, and let each individual purchaser to develop as they see fit. Sort of a suburban subdevelopment model with urban density. Some people would build a single townhouse, some a 4-unit apartment building, some maybe residential over retail. However, the value to the developer is usually in the built square footage. That is, 50 smaller lots are worth more than one bid one. The only reason to break up a block-sized plot would be if you don't have the capital to develop the whole thing at once. I once lived in a building in a very dense urban area (outside the US). The original owner of the building used to own the entire block. He re-platted the block into small parcels and sold of 95% of the land to fund the construction of the building. The area is now mostly built out with fine-grained low-rise 4 to 20-unit condo buildings. No one would think of doing that today, for a couple reasons. First, in any place that will support that kind of density, the land value is high enough that you wouldn't need to sell off anywhere near that high a proportion to fund construction. Second, capital availability in the modern economy is such that there's way more money to be had by using debt financing and developing the whole block in one go.
  6. Angostura
    Some info on the tenant search for this development in CultureMap. One tenant will be a taco concept out of Mexico City called "La Vibra". Still looking for a 2nd restaurant tenant.
  7. Angostura
    Possibly unrelated, but Barrio Antiguo appears to be having a going-out-of-business sale this weekend ahead of demolition next week. (Demo permit issued yesterday.) This project could be getting bigger (or maybe it's just parking).
  8. Angostura
    Where this tower is sited, it'll end up roughly diagonally adjacent (corner to corner) with its neighbor, not directly side-by-side. See the rendering here. W/r/t zoning preventing this sort of thing, I'd say zoning is just as likely to encourage it. See, for example, the stretch of Wilshire Blvd in LA between the 405 and Beverly Hills. Properties directly on Wilshire are zoned for high-rise, but anything adjacent is zoned for single family, which has resulted in a lot of high-rises side-by-side along Wilshire surrounded by blocks of low-density single-family houses. It looks kind of ridiculous.
  9. Angostura
    One other thing: No idea what will be built here, but it'd be really nice if it included some kind of structured parking, rather than surface parking. If you put a 4-story parking structure on 1/4 of this block, you'd have enough space for ~500 cars, which would be enough to serve the entire development, plus the new bank, plus the Waterworks site across Nicholson. That would allow for development of the new surface lot going into the Waterworks site, and activate more pedestrian activity along this stretch of 19th.
  10. Angostura
    I think when Alliance paid as much as they did for the Waterworks site, it caused Chase to look at the opportunity cost of holding that much land for such a low-density use. Whether or not they reduce their actual useful square footage depends on how they build. The land retained by Chase includes the 19th St frontage from Nicholson up to and including one of the two small bungalow-shaped buildings (the one without the tacked-on brick facade). That's about half again as big as the current bank building footprint. However, included with the land transferred to a separate LLC are the parking lots across 19th (~60 spaces) and across Lawrence (~24 spaces) from the site. If they go for structured parking and build 3-4 stories, they'll probably end up with about the same square footage. Otherwise, they just build a neighborhood bank branch with surface parking and relocate the other staff. If I had to guess, I'd expect it to be the former. If all they wanted to build is a neighborhood bank branch, then they wouldn't need that big a footprint. They could just negotiate a lease in whatever the new developer builds.
  11. Angostura
    My understanding is that the main building will stay for now. A new Chase building will be built on the SE corner of the block, at the corner of 19th and Nicholson, and the other 3/4 of the block, including the current bank building, will eventually be sold for development. I haven't seen plans for the new bank building.
  12. Angostura
    Back on topic: demo permits issued today for the Chase bank drive-thru and the two small buildings in the middle of the 500-block of W 19th. My understanding is that Chase will build on the NW corner of 19th and Nicholson and sell the remainder of the block for development.
  13. Angostura
    I've been told it was a reaction to the "canyon-ization" of Woodway, but I have no actual evidence of this. I, for one, find Woodway delightful, and would like more of our major thoroughfares to look like Woodway does. Oh, and while setbacks differ between MTFs and local streets, all public streets outside the CBD have a building line requirement.
  14. Angostura
    So, a couple of quibbles: First, in addition to civil enforcement, there are most definitely criminal penalties for violating Chapter 42 (planning) and Chapter 26 (parking). The penalties are fines, not jail time, but they are criminal penalties nonetheless. Second, while variances to both Ch 42 and Ch 26 ARE possible, I can't think of a single project that sought and received variances allowing for zero setbacks and zero parking minimums outside the CBD (where no such restrictions are imposed). Third, EVEN IF variances were occasionally granted to allow zero setbacks and zero parking, the uncertainty involved would still influence the kind of development that actually happens. It's much easier, faster and lower risk to just propose a "compliant" project. Finally, the relationship between setbacks and fire safety is tenuous. Houston allows 3-ft lateral setbacks with no fire-rating, yet requires 25-ft front setbacks. And there are zero setbacks in the CBD, where, I guess, fires don't happen. In fact, planning and zoning standards are, almost without exception, tools to limit density, or at least to restrict density to certain areas, and are usually sold as such. (They are much like historic preservation in this respect.)
  15. Angostura
    Everything west of Ashland on 19th complies with our current regulations (Ch 42 and Ch 26) regarding setbacks and parking minimums. The good parts of 19th would be illegal to build today.
  16. Angostura
    I wonder if they might move BCN to River Oaks District, and open MAD in the current BCN space. Given the other restaurant tenants in ROD, BCN might be more of a match, whereas MAD could serve as a useful neighborhood restaurant in the current BCN space.
  17. Angostura
    I kind of love the idea of being able to go see a show and still be home before 10PM.
  18. Angostura
    I see what they're trying to go for. Fine-grained urbanism is a lot more visually interesting than course-grained urbanism, so lots of times coarse-grained buildings get dressed up as fine-grained blocks. However, for this to work, you have to follow it all the way to the ground. In this case, you still get all the street-level disadvantages of course-grained development (a continuous wall of parking garage), with visual confusion on top (since there's no reason for the breaks in the facade).
  19. Angostura
    This is the tortilla factory (Espiga de Oro), plus a couple other lots. Across Shepherd from Heights Bier Garten/Wooster's. Given the rapid development in this corridor, and seeing as how the building it'll replace has zero setbacks on three sides, I wish they'd at least TRY and get a reduced building line (plat shows 25-ft along Shepherd).
  20. Angostura
    I'm not sure what the word is for tearing down the ballroom of a french-themed luxury boutique hotel, but I'm pretty sure it's not "gentrification".
  21. Angostura
    (Slightly modified) setback variance approved yesterday. Setback will be 10-ft along Washington, 5-ft along Silver, 0-ft along Center. Parking along southern face of Center now appears to be parallel instead of angle-in.
  22. Angostura
    It's a good opportunity to extend the area exempt from parking minimums all the way to 59.
  23. Angostura
    Setback variance won't get approved any sooner than next week. I didn't see a permit application submitted yet, either. I wouldn't expect construction to start in earnest before mid/late summer, and that's only if plans are ready to submit as soon as the variance gets approved (assuming it does).
  24. Angostura
    I'm in favor of this, but I don't think eliminating parking minimums will actually have that big an impact on the amount of surface parking. Tenants will still want their customers to have a place to park. Zero minimums would probably allocate parking more efficiently (since locations wouldn't have to have exclusive access to parking during the entirety of their open hours). I would also support a special levy on land devoted to parking, with an exemption for structured parking, so as to discourage large surface lots in favor of shared parking structures.
  25. Angostura
    It's pretty close to the CoH minimum, and it looks like they got there pretty aggressively. Total square footage, between the 6 buildings (2 existing, 4 additional) is just over 100k sf. That's an important number, since it exempts them from having to provide additional parking for bars and restaurants in excess of 20% of the total GFA. And bars/restaurants will almost certainly exceed 20% of GFA. Additionally, they're taking very nearly the full reduction for bicycle spaces in lieu of car spaces. With a full 10% reduction, they'd be required to provide 371 spaces. Current layout shows 383. Ideally, I'd eventually like to see the parking go vertical, which would allow development of the rest of the Center St frontage, as well as the lot just east of B&B, not to mention the handful of under-utilized properties across Washington.
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