Development: New Cosmopolitan on the Canal Rendering

Hot off the presses, here's a new canal-side rendering of Flaherty & Collins' mixed-use apartment complex Cosmopolitan on the Canal.
For convenience, here's the earlier rendering of the complex at the corner of Senate and Michigan.
What do you think?

This n' That

Indiana Avenue Restaurant and Lounge: Exterior work continues. They've added three more windows to the Indiana-side roof in addition to the one I showed previously. A number of windows have also been added to the new third-floor space on the North St. side.

IUPUI: Research III is shaping up nicely. This is the last in a trio of interconnected laboratory buildings being built on Walnut St. near University Hospital. With the long-term goal of recruiting 90 faculty members -- as well as the hundreds of associated staff members and students that will work in the labs located in this building -- this represents a significant investment in Indianapolis as a life science hub. Work on the north-side facade is virtually complete and they appear to be in the final stages of work on the south-side facade and People Mover connection. The building is expected to be occupied in December. As the weather continues to warm up, expect to see pictures of this project sometime soon. Research III is the taller middle section with the walkway connection in this rendering:


BadaBoomz: Vintage tastings are back! Stop by Saturday (March 29th) and get a taste of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot '00 & '03 as well as Bell's Batch 7000 (imperial stout). $9 gets you a 5oz sample of all three and when they're gone, they're gone.

HD-DVD Update: supplies of players are drying up, indicating that we're just about at the end of the road. The high-end HD-A35 has been gone for weeks and the HD-A30 is now starting to disappear from online shops. Only a handful of shops still carry the entry-level HD-A3 and they won't last much longer. Movies still appear to be widely available, however. My credit card has been getting quite the workout snatching up discs before they're all gone. With a sunk investment in a player, an average of just $9-10 per movie, and a limited-time opportunity, how could I not?! These movies will be MUCH more expensive once they switch over to Blu-ray. Update (12:50pm) Looks like Best Buy just decided to pull all remaining HD-DVD merchandise.

Development: The Tower at the Stutz

The Tower at the Stutz facts:

• Location: SE corner of 11th St. and Senate Ave.
  
• Height: 18 stories
• Use: mixed (retail, parking, office, condos), LEED certified
  
• Prospects: has been an owner "vision" for several years; recently released renderings (below); webpage states "Anticipated completion in 2010."

A building currently sits on the site proposed for this tower. It's essentially a blank box, painted to match the rest of the Stutz complex but lacking any architectural or historical significance.

Development: New Cosmopolitan on the Canal Rendering

Directly from developer Flaherty & Collins, here is a brand new high resolution rendering for the Cosmopolitan on the Canal:
Compare that to the rendering I posted a little over a month ago:
Boy, life is just a whole lot cheerier in the new rendering! In all seriousness, though, I expressed a dislike for the particular colors chosen in the earlier rendering. Thankfully, they've chosen to tweak the colors, to great effect. In particular, the shade of brick in the new rendering is much more appealing than the original, almost maroon color. And I'm especially glad that they nixed the light green/aqua color on the some of the upper level sections.

What do you think?

Development: More SODO Renderings

The website for the ambitious $480M Legends District-SODO project on the southside of downtown Indy was recently updated. It features a promotional video containing several fly-through clips with various parties talking about the proposal. There's also an information packet in pdf format with some diagrams and a siteplan. For convenience, I've pulled the visuals out of the information packet so you can take a look (the full document can be viewed here). As always, click on any of the pictures for a larger version.




Couple quick observations, mostly based on the siteplan:

• The project will be built in multiple phases, presumably based on demand.
• They're proposing 200 condos. Seems a bit ambitious, particularly when you look closely at the numbers and see that they're planning 1600 sq.ft. and 2800 sq.ft floor plans. Those are big condos. A majority of the condos are in the second phase, with 70 in the first phase.
• Where's the little guy in this plan? Why not take half the condo units, split each of them in half and market them as apartments? With so many different buildings with condo elements -- I count six buildings with condos -- it would be quite easy to maintain them as separate entities.
• Parking is very well hidden, with all of it either underground or backed up to the train tracks. And there certainly is a lot of it, with 1500 planned for phase 1 and 700 in the second phase.
  
• Copious ground floor-retail. Even the theater building has a retail element. Three of the retail units are labeled "x2", presumably double-floor units for the proposed big-box stores.
• On the southern end of the siteplan, it shows Merrill St. with an arrow "TO LILLY" pointing East. I haven't been by there in a while, but isn't Merrill St. fenced-off under the railroad tracks? Interesting, if they're proposing to reopen that.
  

Development: Cosmopolitan on the Canal in Color

I finally located a full color rendering of the Cosmopolitan on the Canal. This shot is looking Northwest at the corner of Senate and Michigan.


I'm not so sure about the choice of colors. What do you think of it?

Development: JW Marriott, Take Trois

The big news in the Indy development world is the release of new renderings for the JW Marriott complex. This hotel is the final cog in a long-term plan to reposition Indy to host more and larger conventions. An analysis by Price Waterhouse Cooper in 2003 called for doubling the size of the Indiana Convention Center -- made possible by the construction of Lucas Oil Stadium and razing of the RCA Dome -- and the addition of a single, 800-1000 room "headquarters" hotel. A JW Marriott hotel proposal was selected in December 2006 to serve as that hotel. Coverage of the hotel redesign can be found here, here, and here, with commentary available here and here.

This is the third design for the complex: the original announcement in October 2006, the long-anticipated and widely criticized redesign made public in May 2007, and this somewhat unexpected, under-the-radar redesign that was released yesterday. Reports indicate that Dean White, the billionaire owner of Whiteco Industries, personally selected this design from among eight that HOK and CSO Architects put together. (I'd kill to see the other seven designs...)

Since it's original concept, the total price of the project has skyrocketed from $250M to $325M to $425M. Thankfully, the public subsidy has remained constant at $48.5M, with the additional expense borne by the developers, REI Real Estate Services and Whiteco Industries. The project has similarly increased in height, from 25 to 29 to 34 stories. The final design is 373 feet tall, which will make the JW Marriott the 7th tallest building in Indy at completion.

A full set of renderings are available from the Indy Star here. The "Victory Field Angle" below provides the sole direct comparison of the three designs, as the original design provided a single conceptual rendering. The design morphed from boring cube to boring slab, before settling on this final sleek, tall, gently curving design. While not dramatically less wide or tall, the third design feels significantly more vertical than the second design. The bump in height also moves the building above the height of the general massing in downtown, a difference that should be even more dramatic given it's position offset from the core of buildings in downtown. Unfortunately, while the tower redesign is being widely praised, early indications are that the pedestrian experience has not improved. I'll withhold judgment on this until more detailed renderings at street-level are available.

Original Concept, October 2006

Redesign 1, May 2007

Redesign 2, December 2007

Development: Cosmopolitan on the Canal

Flaherty & Collins' mixed-use development, Cosmopolitan on the Canal, was announced almost exactly one year ago. The project, located at the corner of Michigan and Senate with canal-front access, is to include 218 apartments, 18,000 square feet of retail, and a 338-space parking garage with a number of spaces designated for public use.

UPDATE: Looking at the "Key Plan" for each floor, the total number of units is just 206. Interesting that it went down, considering that they added a floor of residential in the "main" building at Michigan and Senate. More UPDATE: I found a sheet noting that there still 218 units, so I went back and recounted the number of units. I missed 8 two-story units (therefore, double counted them), so the count is actually 198. Either there's a discrepancy in their schematics or I've miscounted. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem likely that I'd be off by 20.

A groundbreaking had been expected by the end of November. We still haven't seen any dirt move at the project site, but I've rounded up some new renderings that will hopefully tide us over for now. They're dated December 7th, 2007, which at least shows that the project is still moving forward (they've also registered two different domain names). The architect is The Housing Studio of Charlotte, NC. Flaherty & Collins most ambitious project, 210 Trade, is currently being built in Charlotte, though The Housing Studio did not design that building.

First, let's take a look at the renderings. Some of my usual thin commentary will follow. Here is the original sketch of the Michigan/Senate corner from a year ago:


And here are the latest renderings (click on any of these for a larger version):

Corner Elevation, Senate side

Senate Elevation

Senate Garage Elevation (north/right of previous elevation)

Michigan Elevation

Michigan/Senate Corner Elevation

Canal Elevation

Siteplan

Courtyard Siteplan

Michigan/Senate Retail Siteplan

Some observations, starting with the positive:

1. The height has apparently increased from four to six stories in the main building with a seven-story peak at the intersection of Michigan and Senate. The rest of the project appears to be four stories, with one story sunk at canal-level (i.e. the canal-front sections are one story below grade and three above).

2. The detailing looks great and is a significant improvement over the original design that was decent, if a bit clunky. I can't wait to see it in color.

Negative:

1. The parking garage entrance is located on Senate. I assume this was done to make it more visible as a public parking garage for the canal, but it's disappointing that they couldn't negotiate access from North St., leaving the Senate frontage for more retail. Looking at the schematics, it doesn't appear that they own any land directly abutting North St.

2. The canal-level retail is extremely small. There appears to be one retail unit, a canal-front space immediately north of the Indiana Historical Society. The canal-level frontage north of the courtyard cutout is exclusively residential. This was likely done to create a buffer with the Watermark condos immediately north of this project, but it's disappointing nonetheless.

UPDATE: In looking more closely at the canal-front retail, there is a dashed line cutting through that space, presumably indicating that it could be divided into two spaces. The available space is still pathetically small.

What do you guys think of the new design? I'm particularly curious what the architecture professionals/buffs out there think of the detailing.

Photos: Riley Hospital for Children Simon Family Tower Photo Update

Riley Hospital for Children Simon Family Tower Facts:

• Cost: $235M (part of a 10-year expansion plan expected to cost $500M)
  
• Height: 10 stories, 210' (64m), 27th tallest building in Indy at completion
  
• Floor Space: 675,000 sq.ft.
• Project Start Date: June, 2006
  
• Expected Completion: 2013 (some areas will begin to open in 2009)
• Riley Hospital for Children first opened in 1924

Some renderings: From the West:
From the Northwest:
From the Northeast:
From the East:
From the South:
The West Facade:
The South Facade:
From a distance, you can tell how it will
stand out on the IUPUI/IUSM campus:

Development: Legends District - SODO

The rendering of Legends District that's been released (see "This 'n That" below) leaves something to be desired in terms of detail, not to mention that it only shows about one-third of the proposal. On Friday, WTHR and WISHTV posted videos of their news pieces that include some fly-through video and more renderings. They don't help much with detail, but they do provide a much better idea of the lay-out of the project. I captured some of the images from the video so we can take a look at it (sorry about the quality and size -- a slightly larger version is available if you click on these images):

Site Overview:

Looking North:

Looking Northeast:

Looking West (Henry St. runs down the middle):

Looking Southwest:

Parking Garage between the CSX Line and Pennsylvania:

Looking Southeast:

Looking Southeast at the corner of South and Madison:

Ground level in the public plaza:

Quick observations:

• The developers respected the street grid, not only maintaining Henry St. between Madison and Pennsylvania, but extending it to the CSX line. The Scioto St. alley between Arby's and Subway would be vacated, though I don't think that's much of a loss.
• It's clearly designed with street-level atomsphere and walkability very much in mind.
• Decent density on the northern section of the project. It appears to be generally around 5-10 stories, with the one large structure at South & Pennsylvania perhaps as tall as 15 stories.

Hopefully we'll get some more detailed renderings in the future.

(note: the Legends District logo is a trademark of the Legends Entertainment Group, LLC.)