Quote:
Originally Posted by CANUC
My guess is that there are a couple of reasons, first if you look at the original concept it relies heavily on two parking garages to provide space for retail and the like. The one at 4th St and Jackson and the one attached to USAWC along with the lot just west of USAWC, now when you take into consideration that the W Hotel is no longer a go and neither is the 12 story building atop the Sun Merc the retail around the 4th and Jackson garage would seem very disjointed. Also, I don’t remember the details but I recall that there where some rumblings about how enthusiastic Steve Kerr was in getting involved with this development so at this point the garage along USAWC may have been put in doubt.
Now if you look at the new renderings and compare them to the original idea you can see that the focus still remains on 2nd St and Jackson and extends outward. So with that in mind following the path of least resistance from this point it would seem logical to look for cheaper more available land which takes you south and to keep it closer to foot traffic i.e. USWAC and Chase Field it would also take you east. Many of the surface parking lots available to both venues are in this area and during events there is a tremendous amount of foot traffic in this area, even more than north of Jefferson. So it just seems logical to go this route and in fact engaging what is left in the warehouse district would great idea. If you remember one of the first attempts at true lofts were the Stadium Lofts on 2nd St and Buchanan and lets not forget the first true high rise condo in downtown (Summit) also happened in the warehouse district.
|
Concerning the inconsistent progress (if any at all) of Jackson street,
The first " RED FLAG/s" that looms is/are:
those seriously outdated or (re-modified) highrises of downtown.
First of all, those CITYSCAPE highrise renderings are painted as 40 story
towers & now they have shrunk to 34 & 26 story towers respectively.
The "W" is now dead but it is mysteriously still in the rendering. 
& the summit in that photo resembles a 30 story or 300 + foot tower, but
instead its a dinky little cracker-jack box that is dwarfed by chase field.
(DONT GET ME WRONG ! Im not saying the rendering is your fault, I just brought it up to make a point about Jackson street.)
I said all that to say this:
it wouldnt surprise me if something "goes screwy" with
the project.
but on the other hand hopefully I """will be surprised"""