cityscapes

I love how these turned out I can't wait for the rest of them to be built. That will be quite the urban intersection when it's all finished.

Not sure this project was posted anywhere online but there's a sizable new townhouse development being built near the back of Jeffery Park. I pulled this from the city's citizens access page, for newer projects if you find the site plan you can go into attachments and download a PDF of what was approved. FYI this does not work on Safari but works in Chrome.

Glad to see Milo Grogan become investment worthy but I'm not sure I'd want to live on that street. The neighborhood still has a long way to go.

Whatever they all look the same.

I'll be there if I'm in town

Borror project on Town.

The Motorists Insurance apartments are finally at street level. This one seems like it's taking forever to make progress.

The Harlow. Elevator cores topped out with the framing now on the 4th floor.

The brickwork on the Matan Building is turning out nicely. I think this will be one of the nicer new additions to downtown when it's finished.

Redder. I hope they go back and fix some of the red panels, they're looking pretty warped. I'm not impressed with the build quality of a lot of Columbus projects. It seems like the contractors have very poor quality control or skill in installing anything other than brick. The orange terra-cotta panels on the Valencia building in the Short North are all off kilter, the EIFS on the Edwards project on High Street between Gay & Long looking all warped, and now this with the metal panels looking all wavy. I love outside of the box designs such as this but the commission should be giving some of these materials more scrutiny if they don't turn out nicely in reality. They get way too wooed by a pretty rendering.

The elevator core seems to be topped out.

Bridge park hotel number two starting to rise. Rapid progress on the next phase. Cladding progress. The bridge is finishing up. Can't wait until all this is finished it's going to be so cool. I went to the Central Ohio Planning Conference a month or two ago (I'm losing my sense of time) and got a tour of the project. The overall development is going to be huge, they also own land south of the roundabout which I did not know.

Third and High is moving very quickly. This picture isn't the best but they've excavated down quite a bit and all the concrete supports are formed. Most of this is blocked by the concrete form on the left of the picture.

Ask and you shall receive... They're moving pretty quickly on this project. The Schottenstein one is moving slowly and didn't warrant any pictures, they're still playing in the dirt. The restoration of the historic building near Pins is also progressing but I'll take pictures if I see a worthwhile change. I'm downtown everyday if there's something you want to see let me know and I'll do my best to get an update.

Italian Village updates

The sidewalk is slowly finishing up, can't wait until they plant the street trees so we can see slightly less of the building.

It looks good and I love how they preserved the older building on the corner but I feel like it would be better if they flipped the taller portion to be at the intersection and the shorter massing located at the south so you don't have a really tall buildings adjacent to the lower buildings on the same block.

This project keeps getting better and better, I can't wait for it to break ground, but before approval someone better notice the balconies on the townhomes expose the wood to pedestrians below and should not be left unfinished. Seems like a minor detail but it detracts from the overall sleekness of the project.

The zoning in this area permits shared parking. It is normally not permitted.

The comments on that CU post are mostly negative which is surprising. I don't get why people would care if a neighborhood offers homeowners the ability to build an ADU if they want. The development seems like it's going to be well done and it's about time the Columbus area got something like this, almost every other peer city has a mixed use new urbanist development already. I just wish something like this would be built closer in, being walkable is definitely negated by how far these people are going to have to drive to work.

It's all one building.

Yes it does. I did some research and the architect of this project is actually from Denver which might explain the overall look of the project. I took some more photos of the project today. I'd argue it looks the best from this angle. The visible parking deck and dead wall against the sidewalk with the ventilation isn't the type of pedestrian experience a 2019 building should be providing. This should have also had an active frontage like on High, especially because as you'll see in the next picture, it would have been continuing the active frontages that are already there. The laundry vents sticking through the cornice... Very curious to see if that metal strip running down the building will be covered or painted to match. The materials don't look good now I don't want to think about how they're going to age. From the Downtown District Guidelines: MATERIALS Building materials used in the Downtown should be of high quality and durability. Traditional masonry materials are appropriate as they have proven durability and structural integrity. Front facing facades and facades facing public streets, parks and other civic spaces should demonstrate a higher level of design. Stucco and stucco-like products, synthetic stucco, vinyl, wood, and concrete block are generally not appropriate finish materials in the Downtown and should be avoided. So much for having guidelines.

Chicago isn't realistic or similar, imo. The transit they have, the jobs and wages they pay within the loop and types of development they get as a result of that are totally different. I have a friend who is a planner there and from what I've heard it's not really a good city to emulate as far as progressive planning or development review. It seems like a very whatever the aldermen says goes type of place tinged with a lot of corruption. This. I don't know if any of you have gone to a Downtown Commission meeting. They're at a horribly inconvenient time for anyone who works normal hours, but applicants basically show up with renders and materials and if they like it, it gets approved. There's no thorough review, there's no report by actual staff planners that look at the project and determine whether the buildings actually meet any of the Downtown Design Guidelines. Same goes for the Historic Commissions, however, those neighborhoods usually have more residents that show up and care about how things look to push things in a better direction and the commissioners for those tend to be more thorough. We need to move away from that system and properly review the development so that it's good. Amsterdam has a lot of full block new buildings that try to break up the facade from being monotonous but rather than looking like a hot mess they try to use different massing, balconies, complimentary materials etc to accomplish this rather than multiple styles that don't work together. Sources: http://www.architectuur-fotograaf.eu/?feed=rss2&media-tags=blok-53 http://www.architectuur-fotograaf.eu/?feed=rss2&media-tags=blok-47 Going this route would have been way more successful.

There are too many different styles and materials on one building for this one to look good. My biggest issue with it is how there's a gap on the north side for the parking deck and you can see the drop ceiling, parking lot lighting, and parking areas. That should have been screened with some type of perforated metal panel, it looks so trashy the way it is.