ExPatClevGuy

They seem to recognize the need for texture and a bit of architectural romance and shape at street level, then they abandon it all for the balance of the structure. 😀 / 🙄

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Check out the conceptual/evocative Public Square style view.

Except for ground-floor parking, this is an actually delightful concept for GA Tech that speaks well to the SW Site - by a Pickard Chilton architect. 'Concept & images are posted at: http://kylebeneventi.com/pickard-chilton/ (Create a tunnel for West 3rd Street, and Voila!) "GA TECH - TECHNOLOGY SQUARE COMPETITION Technology Square will inspire and realize a sustainable, innovative ecosystem that integrates Technology Square with the new interdisciplinary research and economic development potential. Sited across the bridge from GA TECH proper, this tower will encourage a collaborative community; linking students interested in tech and software with research labs and companies that can train them and facilitate their potential. This relationship is further strengthened by the High Performance Computing Center, which occupies the historic Crum and Forster building connected to the tower on the first four floors. All work is the property of and was a collaborative effort of Pickard Chilton Architects."

It will be impossibly challenging to dress these plain-Jane fronts with some canopies and potted plants. The storefront at the Schofield across the street is period-accurate as expected, given the amount of public support it also received. These fronts look flimsy & low-grade. Those canopies in the illustration would work just as well over the Mr. Hero restaurant on W 117th (no offense to Mr. Hero, I do love me some Romanburgers.) Flat and lifeless is what got approved?! No texture, design excellence, or depth is built into the basic structure. None of those "look up at me" party lights on the roof will solve this design problem. Those lights will come and go over the years. What will be built into stone here is what the City of Cleveland has accepted for us. Did an off-price shoe store from the 1990s really have a more welcoming appearance from the street than this?

I absolutely agree. They for sure didn't have to make it as lovely as this example I snatched below, but it does represent the kind of quality one would really hope for at street level given the amount of government support it has received. As it stands, it doesn't even look as good as the storefront widows of BR Baker, Society Bank, or Dallas Shoes; all of which were former tenants of this particular front. 😔

@dave2017 Thanks for noticing that! I get thrown off by 55 Public Square all the time in my orientation of P.S. Then, I spouted right off in a blather about the humdrum direction of the design. What you bring up leaves me feeling somewhat more optimistic about a different approach to what may rise directly on Public Square.

@whipkacka - It's a pretty good match. Maybe they plan to outbid K&D for 55 Public Square and restore it themselves. There goes the need for a new second tower. Instant SW Campus - voila! ...cringe!

Meh. 😑 Is there a less interesting word than boring? I waited, but it was just going to be this old thing all along... "Guess I'll have to get used to it" - Eeyore (Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne)

Thanks KJP for the floor-plan/map. ...and "Duh," thank you Wikipedia!. How did I make it to this age without looking it up sooner. There have been times when I actually wondered, but never followed up: At the Cleveland Union Terminal, "The portion of the station above the interurban tracks was called the Traction Concourse and the portion above the intercity train tracks was called the Steam." http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oh1517.photos.126378p/resource/

I hate that our scoreboard is shaped like the state of Tennessee. 🏈 Boo Titans! How was this lost on planners and folk at the city given the deep Tennessee roots of the Haslams. - Meh!

I'll never forget my first time noticing 55 Public Square, or more accurately my subsequent observations . Based on the weather outside that first day, I thought it was temperature reading! I was confused that it never changed, which made me wonder if it was broken.

I would like to see less of a disconnect between the "open glass boxes" that appear to be the main design statement on the Western elevation by incorporating some subtle arch'ful element to match the brick arches - below are just some concept images. I couldn't find an arch composed of inset glass in a commercial application by doing a quick search. There are window systems out there that would help achieve at least a cheap version of this effect (center). Of course I'd truly prefer some sculpted glass arches as window surrounds on the 25th Street Side of the building, but who am I kidding? I'll take what we get, I guess.

Uh oh... Gracious - Thanks! I guess what happened before & after my personal connection is indeed wrong in my written account. I'm pretty sure I was right about the many failed relationships though and his five homes on Lake Ave. I can go back and edit my story with the your correct information, unless you'd prefer I leave it so this thread may continue linearly with the correction acknowledged.

Wow, That's right between former Cleveland Safety Dirtector Billl Denihan's house on Lake Avenue (Michael R. White administration,) and former Cleveland Safety Director Eliot Ness's apartment! I used to live in the Elliot Ness Suite of the Anglo-French Edgewater/Breakers Building. I overlooked Edgewater Park, the lake and downtown from my dining room! Oh Lort, that neighborhood was fun back in the 90s! Incidentially, in the 1980s, I also lived in the former University Circle elegant apartment of Al Capone's "kept woman" in Cleveland @ the corner of Ford & Hessler Streets.. Too much coincidence. - I never planned it that way , but it makes for great cocktail party chat today. (Elliott Ness lived in five different places on Lake Avenue. He went through wives like something shameful, I must say. His ashes were personally scattered over the pond at Lakeview Cemetery by Bill Denihan & Cleveland police officers in September of '97. - Fun times then while I was an official at the City of Cleveland. M.R.W. was absolutely as maniacal as they say. After Eliot Ness lost his mayoral bid to William R. Hopkins, he split for Chicago and became untouchable. ) For the record, my opinion is that the planned new building is too tall to play nicely with its historic neighbors. I'm not fan of this style because I think it looks cheap, but the scale is more important to me here than the style. - There is no unit 12B, as the basement is the building next door is a garage 😉.

Thy are applying and removing a thick poultice that is non-acidic: It pulls off the filth like Silly Putty™ pulls up the funny pages.

As someone who worked at City Hall for a number of years, I can appreciate and attest to the importance of that short-term surface lot for engineers, permit seekers, meeting attendees, architects, contractors, speakers, attorneys... and an endless stream of others with short term parking needs from all corners of the city, and there are a ton who need to quickly dart in and out from City Hall all day long. The Willard Garage below this deck is used for general longer term parking for City Hall staffers, and I guess the public sidewalks in front of the Convention Center are used by entitled local government employees too 🙄. It is the most visible and easily accessible place for parking, so it reduces traffic messes on Lakeside and is not likely to be abandoned IMHO.

...le sigh!

My sense, which could be wrong of course is that Midland is indeed old (90 years old this year!) but wired well and well maintained enough for SW to have called it home, and Landmark has sustained it through remarkable growth all of these years until now. I'm afraid most of the views from here are shadow canyon losers tho, except maybe from the corners or overlooking the industrial valley, which is at least interesting and sunny. What a view for Cliffs though overlooking the former Mittal steel works in the valley below. I've never peered at this building from above and looked down into the light well until today. Now I spy a vaulted room at the bottom of a large lightwell. At one time there were three elaborate art-deco reception halls in the Midland/Medical Arts/Guildhall buildings, now there's just the one that is accessible from W. Prospect. The other two have reportedly been "lost."

There's another large building about to come on the market. Timing is everything tho... 'Will be great if that awful blank brick wall facing out to Ontario Street finally gets a fresh finish too.

I agree that something in this flavor might be great for Public Square. If Pickard Chilton is so inspired as to have the left side of such a tower step down towards Public Square in the style of 30 Rockefeller Center, we would have everything I desire. Differentiation & style, but connection the more formal and vertical enterprise of Cleveland's romantic 20th-Century-masterpiece architectural landscape, (minus the children's building-block look of the Justice Center.) Architectural heritage-wise it works from a storytelling standpoint too. 30 Rock is stylistically the same as SW's current home in the Landmark Office Towers, albeit on Steroids. If the State of Ohio hadn't sent JD Rockefeller to NY for tax reasons, Rockefeller Center might have been built here in the first place.

Yes, but a glass (or perhaps mostly glass) design that isn't so alien against the backdrop of the rest of the city that it doesn't look weirdly placed and ill-conceived like the Devon tower. Nice as it is, Devon overpowers to a fault. It now appears as the only structure of note on the OKC skyline. The Cleveland skyline is one of the most graceful and picturesque of any mid-sized American cities. The elegant cohesiveness of Cleveland's skyline-look, despite our variety of shape and form, is an outstandingly uncommon feature. it helps Cleveland to stand out as distinctive and attractive by comparison to so many others. - Not a bland tower, just not weird please. On balance, the whole should be greater than the sum of its parts.

The new surface can be upgraded later, I suppose. Future generations will judge us over it, and edit it as (I hope) is appropriate