Salt Lake MSA Development Thread

[urbanboy]

He's talking about these:

[urbanboy]

Originally Posted by John Martin

I quite like it as it is right now, there's a wonderful vibe there... My favorite is Market Street Grill with the modern cable swaying bridge that goes over the river. It's really an exciting area.

You should get out more... out of your car, out more.

[RFPCME]

John Martin: Thank you (I think?) for posting the picture of the bldg. in Holladay I dislike so much. Yes, that is the one. Just the picture of it turns my stomach.

Architecture is more than personal taste because a bldg. occupies public space, at least visually. The bldg. in Holladay does not fit with anything in the area. In fact, it runs counter to the understated charm of Holladay and the Cottonwood Heights area. The angles of the building are vicious, like the surface of the Moon. The absurd color scheme, aqua (or whatever that color is), brushed metal, and jet black also remind me of a lunar landscape. I cannot think of any place in the State of Utah where that building would make sense. Nothing in Utah is that bleak, with the possible exception of the salt flats.

The 3 buildings in the Cottonwood Corporate Center evoke the same emotions from me. In my mind, good architecture blends in with the character of the site. If the architecture is really good, it emphasizes the pleasing aspects of the building site. All four of these buildings (the 3 in the mouth of the Canyon and that "thing" in Holladay) are in direct contradiction to everything that is good about those areas. All would be better suited as casinos on the surface of the Moon. The architects (I suspect it's the same group) and the developers should be arrested for visual pollution and never allowed to design or build anything again, unless the proposed project site 184K miles straight up from the Earth's surface.

[Urban_logic]

Originally Posted by urbanboy

Are you kidding?!

No, I'm not. The Bay Area has tons of thriving suburban centers, yet San Fran is still cranking out 60-story buildings with 90-story "super-talls" on the way. It even has a nearby city that has a quarter million more people than it does (San Jose) and it's still doing fine. Whether it's Denver or the Bay Area, regions do so much better when they have thriving centers sorounding a large center. The key is attractions and incentives that draw people and businesses in conjunction with easy transportation access (both mass and auto). Maybe instead of bitching about the suburbs steeling your office space, SLC could provide incentives for more businesses to come down town

I can't remember who said it on here, but I totally agree with the person who said that the best city centers emerge from the most challenging developing climates. SLC is capable of capturing it's own destiny suburbs or not. Just remember that every city has suburbs, so that is not an excuse as to why a city center fails. It fails because it doesn't provide adaquate incentive for people and business to come into it. You can't just use the suburbs as a convenient scapegoat. Suburbs may be one factor in the equation, but they are not the ultimate cause of the down fall of urban centers. Look at New York, it has a hundred miles of suburban growth conected to it, yet it's still doing fine. The key is to stop looking at ways to fight the suburbs and start looking for ways to use the suburbs to your advantage. Suburbs can help an urban center just as well as hurt it - it's up to the urban center. The suburbs will be there no matter what, so you can either fight the inevitable, or use it to your advantage. You can either let the rising tide drown you, or use it to raise you up.

[John Martin]

Originally Posted by urbanboy

He's talking about these:

Yeah, I'm well aware of the Old Mill complex. He also made reference to the nice building in Holladay, which I posted.

Originally Posted by urbanboy

You should get out more... out of your car, out more.

What do you mean?

It's a nice development. Just because it's no the best in the world doesn't mean I can't like it. (and the bus stops right behind Market Street Grill, btw, the bridge is a pedestrian bridge).

[urbanboy]

I know, I've been there. I was assuming you drove your car to get there. Am I right?

[arkhitektor]

Originally Posted by urbanboy

I know, I've been there. I was assuming you drove your car to get there. Am I right?

I assume Urbanboy walked there from downtown.

[Orlando]

Originally Posted by John Martin

I love this building!


Haha, how could you say that? I think it looks fantastic. It's literally within walking distance of my house so I see it everyday, I've never heard anyone say they didn't like it. ...

I actually like that building. It's ultra cool. I've walke around it before. It's like a hidden gem of architecture in the SL valley. Though, I do understand, how someone might feel that it is out of place. Unfortunately, there isn't much architectual uniformity adjacent to it other than a few old shops that were built to the sidewalk.

I agree with the complaint about those three very bland office buildings at the Old Mill site at Cottonwood Heights. What's worse is that they partially block the view of Twin Peaks as your driving towards the mountains on I-215. In my opinion, the best building in that area is the one on the se corner of I-215 and 6200 south.

[Orlando]

Originally Posted by urbanboy

The sum of all levels of office space in office buildings at the Cottonwood Corporate Center (business park), including this new proposal, equals 87. So basically, this business park could have been either one 87 story tower in downtown, two 43 story towers in downtown, three 29 story towers in downtown, four 22 story towers in downtown, and so on.

And that is just the Cottonwood Corporate Center. Currently, Sandy is at 89.

87 Stories


89 Stories

Excellent point Urban Boy! Sprawl prevents us from having a more attractive city.

In addition, have you seen how incredibly bland and ugly most of these 4 to 6 story office buildings in the suburbs look like?! Have you seen the pink one on the south side of I-15 at about 9600s.? or the huge grey ones by Sandy city Hall. The architects who do most of these buildings, especially the ones near Southtowne in Sandy, have little idea of what good contemporary architecture looks like. Some of the ones at cottonwood heights try. The one with the prongs at the ends, tries too hard to not be bland, but looks so un-balanced and unclean. It's one of my least favorite buildings there. It is one that I would consider jarring, and unrefined. I sure hope they clean up the 12 story version of that. They probably won't though. There are some handsome darker stone buildings further up 6200s. looking down on Old Mill. I woulld like to post images of these from Google Maps, but I don't know how to.

[arkhitektor]

I'm not commenting on its location, because I'm sick of the "suburbs are destroying the world" argument that keeps getting re-hashed here, but I, for one, think that this is a great looking building, especially for an office park:

Originally Posted by Viperlord

I just hope that this is never allowed to happen again in Utah:

[urbanboy]

Originally Posted by arkhitektor

I assume Urbanboy walked there from downtown.

Yeah, on what infrastructure?

[John Martin]

Alright so I took a few pictures of the current buildings. I kind of like this one, it's different from most of the shoebox-with-a-rotunda offices you see along I-15, and behind these.


What I'm confused about is where exactly they're intending to put this building, they just built this big parking garage in the middle of the Old Mill complex...


This is the third building, the aluminum curves just look dumb on this one, I think, as it makes no sense compared to the other one.


This is Market St. with the bridge I love so much:

bridge detail:


I guess these are the buildings everyone hates. They're actually quite nice inside, I mean, I imagine anyone who drives a bimmer and lives in a mcmansion would appreciate how shiny the granite is in the lobbies. You have to admit though, it is a pretty good sized group, occupying space that would otherwise be covered with stucco cookie-cutter houses. All the buildings have excellent views of the valley, and you still get an excellent view of Mt. Olympus' gorgeous red base.

View looking east, showing the rest of the office buildings, hotel and strip-mallish thing:

[RFPCME]

Ark: How could you include a picture of that horrific mess just south of Provo on the west side of I-15, just when I was about to soften my attitude toward Provo and it's surroundings. That picture is going to set my rehabilitation back 15 years...at least!

I guess when you compare the building in Holladay to that disaster, it looks acceptable. I just don't like the retro-60's look of the building in Holladay. It seems dated by 50 years, belonging more to George Jetson than Hanna Montana. Buildings of that style were bad when they were constructed the first time (which explains why there aren't many left), and they are worse now.

I will admit, however, that the two, newer, water-melon-slice buildings in the Cottonwood Corporate Center are much better than the first one. But the designs, in my mind, are garish. They do attract attention...much the same way a leisure suit attracts attention, which is not a good thing.

[Urban_logic]

Originally Posted by arkhitektor

I just hope that this is never allowed to happen again in Utah:

Oh yeah, that would be awful!! It's so ugly with its spires and glistning glass windows Just look at all the dimension! We really need to revert back to investing in cubes and cereal boxes...

[T-Mac]

I took these last summer. I have a couple clients in the Millrock buildings. They are very nice inside. This area of commercial is a driving nightmare. The roads are not very well laid out and it is only getting worse with the additional buildings that they have put in and plan on putting in.

[Urban_logic]

It seems to me that the people on here who bitch the loudest about sprawl likewise bitch the loudest about bringing density to the suburbs. So which would you prefer? An endless sea of houses with massive commuting and a resulting Los Angeles-sized smog cloud....or allowing the suburbs to densify? Now that I think about it, you guys would probably wish we didn't exist at all. Well, guess what? The suburbs are here, and they're here to stay. They are going to continue to grow and desify wheather you bitch about it or not. The best thing you can do is be part of the solution and start offering ideas of how to best develop the suburbs rather than complaining about them.

I have never seen a city with so many people that hate their suburbs. Most cities support their suburbs and play an active part in helping them to develop in a beneficial way. But here they are left to fend for themselves without central SLC support or approval. In the Bay Area, I had no problem telling people that I lived in the suburbs...but here it's like wearing a scarlet letter on my chest. Guess what people? I LIVE IN WEST JORDAN, I HAVE A HOUSE WITH (GASP) A YARD, I LOVE IT OUT HERE, I SUPPORT SMART GROWTH AND INVESTING IN DENSITY IN MY AREA. Loud and proud.

[cololi]

UL,

I think one of the biggest problems is the manner in which suburbs are growing. They grow without thinking about the big picture or the impact their growth has on the rest of the region. Most suburbs believe any growth is good growth. I have repeatedly said that until suburbs start to address their connectivity, mix of land uses, and overall design they are a drain. Don't get so uptight. people are entitled to their opinion. People are going to disagree with you. People aren't going to like developments that you like. Big deal.

[Future Mayor]

I do think UL has a point.

For those of who are practicing planners, as well as concerned citizens, it is up to us to educate elected officials in the direction of smart growth.

If we were all against sprawl than shouldn't we really all live in the Boston Area, shouldn't that just be one HUGE city with 1,000's of 100 story skyscrapers for us all to live in. SLC, Boise, Denver and all the others shouldn't exist in this scenario. Yet they all do for different reasons, and WJ, SJ, and Herriman all exist for different reasons as well. This is a reality in a democratic, capitalistic nation such as ours. We have property rights and can't fully dictate how those rights can be used. City's can guide development while providing incentives and opportunities for land owners to still make money and develop their property.

Suburbs will naturally begin to densify and they simply must do it in a responsible and reasonable manner. I'm not against Sandy densifying in it's "downtown" however it needs to have a realistic vision of how that should be accomplished, rather than simply bow to a developer to feed your ego, not considering the effects a mega project will have on existing infrastructure, namely traffic.

I could go on and on, but I won't.

[DMTower]

My biggest problem with suburbs is the terrible way they are designed. They throw shit down without a thought to whether it's cohesive or can evolve down the road. One neighborhood has a mess of a grid that's completely different than the messy grid across the street. The only way to connect those neighborhoods into an efficient grid down the road is to completely demolish them and start over! It's waste! As it stands most of the suburbs in this valley can't develop efficient density without plowing their way through neighborhoods to connect streets that should've been designed better in the first place but greedy, sloppy developers didn't bother to. Anyone who has played SimCity knows exactly what I'm talking about... when you first start the game you suck at it and end up demolishing half your city down the road when you finally learn better.

[CONative]

Originally Posted by cololi

The biggest problem with suburban development is that there are very limited connections. Even Daybreak is limited in how it is connected to the areas around it. Someone early talked about the major street grid being in place, and it is. The biggest problem though his that the connections between arterials, collectors and local streets are limited. You see this in all parts of the suburbs, whether it is Taylorsville, Sandy, South Jordan, etc. Until the development patterns change, the suburbs have a real challenge of improving their land use mix, transportation, etc. into a system that limits their impact. They can do it, but they need to do some soul searching about the role they play in the region and and the best way they can fulfill the role to benefit themselves and their neighbors. Job creation is a major component of that.

Denver Tech Center is a crazy place, similar to the fort union area, only much larger. I was at the Rocky Mt. land use Institute a few years back and they said that there were more jobs in the tech center than in Downtown. I also noticed a lot of vacancies when I was there. The City it is in (commerce City I think) has a very small base population and has real issues paying for services for their daytime population based on there small number of residents. It is almost the complete opposite situation than most suburbs.

The Denver Tech Center is not in one city. It lies within the city of Denver, Greenwood Village, Centennial, and has some unincorporated spots (Commerce City isn't close to it at all). I've never heard of any problems paying for services within the area. The area known as Denver Tech covers a massive land area - whereas Downtown Denver is a much smaller and denser land area. Right now, Denver Tech (at least what everyone refers to Denver Tech) employs about the same as Downtown Denver. Over the years, what is referred to as the Denver Tech area has expanded to include areas along I-25 that aren't officially the Denver Tech Center (which is mostly in Denver), but are adjacent to it. It has crept more south as the years have gone by and metro residents have kept referring to the entire southeast corridor of I-25 (south of I-225) as Denver Tech. I don't believe there are a lot of vacancies. I'm pretty sure it's less than other cities' vacancy rates. There are even more new taller buildings in Denver Tech now (than what the pictures on this thread show). It definitely looks like it could be the central business district of a good sized smaller city (i.e. the size of Omaha) when driving on the highway. I've even had out-of-towners ask if it was downtown Denver before seeing the much taller and denser downtown Denver. Denver Tech also has high rise residential buildings within it (one is brand new and about 20 stories tall). So, it's slowly becoming more dense, but it's obviously not downtown and much of it is not in the Denver city limits.

Denver metro also has a large office center between Boulder and Denver -- known as Interlocken. There is also a large office and business center with many high rises within Denver city limits along I-25 and Colorado Blvd. Aurora, Lakewood, and the airport area also have some nicely sized business centers with several high rise buildings within them.

It's nice to have these extra business centers spread throughout, but it has detracted some building development in downtown Denver over the years. The good thing is that our mass transit light rail lines will connect all of these business centers together.