Great Lakes Cities

[Steely Dan]

Two great panos of two great cities on two great lakes!



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Source: SSP's very own Cirrus, in this thread: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...5#post10186045



Source: SSC's Brewers567, in this thread: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threa...post-188123178

[Wigs]

Steely, I approve

[edale]

Milwaukee's CBD skyline is pretty underwhelming, but the string of lakefront high rises is impressive. If Chicago is the Miami of the North, I think Milwaukee is the Fort Lauderdale!

[Steely Dan]

Ft. Lauderdale: the Milwaukee of the Caribbean!


Seriously though, if you find Milwaukee's downtown skyline underwelming now, DO NOT go googling for pics of it back in the '90s. Yikes!

Pound for pound, it's been one of the fastest growing skylines in the rustbelt over the past 2 decades or so. The growth has been quite dramatic and has radically improved the skyline.

[lio45]

The former is Cleveland, right? What's that white mansion over the cliffs on the right?

[East72nd]

WOW! Two of the best skyline panos yet posted on the forum, congrats!

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by lio45

The former is Cleveland, righ?

Bullseye!

A tad surprised a veteran SSP'er wouldn't automatically peg it as Cleveland from terminal tower, but you're Canadian, so you get a pass.

Originally Posted by lio45

What's that white mansion over the cliffs on the right?

No idea, but what a sweet piece of property on high bluffs overlooking the lake, with a spectacular skyline view.

[mrnyc]

^ that view is from lakewood park. lakewood is just west of cleveland on the lake. its mostly notable as the densest city in ohio. cleveland’s gold coast highrises are around there too. thankfully that cliff drops off by the cleveland border and you have a terrific great lakesy beach at edgewater park.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Seriously though, if you find Milwaukee's downtown skyline underwelming now, DO NOT go googling for pics of it back in the '90s. Yikes!

Pound for pound, it's been one of the fastest growing skylines in the rustbelt over the past 2 decades or so. The growth has been quite dramatic and has radically improved the skyline.

Just to add some data to this, Milwaukee has more than doubled the number of 300+ footers in its skyline so far this century (going from 7 in 2000 to 15 today). The advantage of starting from a low base is obviously in effect here, but no other major midwest/rustbelt city has done that.

In absolute numbers, that might even be the greatest number of such towers added to a midwest/rustbelt skyline in that time period (outside of Chicago, of course).



Milwaukee's 300+ footers (bolded are 21st century):

1. U.S. Bank Center - 601' - 1973
2. Northwestern Mutual Tower - 554' - 2017
3. Couture - 537' - 2024
4. 100 East Wisconsin - 495' - 1989
5. University Club Tower - 446' - 2007
6. Milwaukee Center - 426' - 1988
7. 411 East Wisconsin - 408' - 1985
8. 7Seventy7 - 387' - 2018
9. Kilbourn Tower - 380' - 2005
10. Milwaukee City Hall - 353' - 1895
11. Northwestern Mutual Tower - 349' - 1990
12. The Moderne - 348' - 2013
13. 333 N Water -342' - 2024
14. BMO Harris Financial Center - 335' - 2020
15. AT&T Center - 313' - 1924

[mrnyc]

behold the start of cuyahoga freighter season aerials from cleveland —


https://www.instagram.com/reel/C31aY...NlMWpndzg0OWZl

[Wigs]

For Great Lakes/Rust Belt cities, Buffalo is no Milwaukee and much smaller than most but here's what has been built since 2000




Terry Pegulas' $200M HarborCenter:
- Full service Marriott, Southern Tier Brewpub
- Twin pad ice arena, top notch athletic training facility atop a huge parking garage attached via skywalk to KeyBank arena (great having 3 ice rinks for hockey tournaments or NCAA basketball tourneys)

- 250 Delaware - Delaware North HQ incl Westin Hotel
- new Federal courthouse
- new $270M Children's Hospital
- new (no diagram) $375M UB Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (Jeremy Jacobs is head of Delaware North companies)
- new buildings on the Buffalo Niagara medical campus ($291M Gates Vascular Institute)
- 500 Pearl is mixed use w Aloft hotel (hideous design, but has a rooftop patio https://500pearlbuffalo.com/)
- The Pasquale is a waterfront condo with units that typically sell from $550k-$1M+. A 3,600 sq ft unit sold last year for $1.675M

[BigDipper 80]

I feel like it's really hard to capture how huge the Key Tower actually is in photos. It's pretty crazy that a mid-sized Rust Belt city has a 947 foot tall skyscraper.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by BigDipper 80

I feel like it's really hard to capture how huge the Key Tower actually is in photos. It's pretty crazy that a mid-sized Rust Belt city has a 947 foot tall skyscraper.

nah, but if you still want pretty crazy you should check out the ameritrust tower renders prior to the merger that canceled it. much taller. and if you want truly wild and crazy check out the early gehry progressive tower that didn’t happen either.

[East72nd]

Punches way above its weight, it just needs larger companies to improve and expand its downtown.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by BigDipper 80

I feel like it's really hard to capture how huge the Key Tower actually is in photos. It's pretty crazy that a mid-sized Rust Belt city has a 947 foot tall skyscraper.

It's still the tallest building in the midwest/rustbelt (outside of Chicago) for more than three decades now, and by a fairly comfortable margin.

Though, the height figure is padded a bit by its 60' spire on top. Taking the roof height of 888' makes Pittsburgh"s 841' US Steel Tower fairly close in height.

Originally Posted by East72nd

Buffalo...Punches way above its weight

As a city, yes.

But as a skyline, I'd say it's been a big underperformer for a while now.

Buffalo hasn't built a new building over 300' tall for 50 years now.

One of these decades.......

[iheartthed]

Based mostly on the data from the SSP diagram, here's some skyline "health" data for cities we consider Great Lakes and/or adjacent Rust Belt:

Average Height of 10 Tallest
Chicago: 1,070 feet
Pittsburgh: 614 feet
Detroit: 564 feet
Cleveland: 555 feet
Milwaukee: 460 feet
St. Louis: 454 feet
Buffalo: 332 feet

Average Age of 10 Tallest
Buffalo: 82.3 years
Detroit: 55.6 years
Pittsburgh: 49.3 years
St. Louis: 48.1 years
Cleveland: 42.6 years
Chicago: 28.5 years
Milwaukee: 24.4 years

Buffalo has the oldest skyline of this group by a country mile, while Milwaukee slightly edges out Chicago for the youngest. Buffalo also has the shortest skyline of this group.

Half of Detroit's top 10 are the Ren Cen towers and considering them as one single building would drive down Detroit's average height to 530 feet, and rank it below Cleveland. Detroit's average age would go up to 65.6 years, remaining the second oldest skyline among this group.

[IrishIllini]

Not a huge change for Detroit if you consider the Renaissance Center as one building.

Height is nice, but I'd 100% trade several of Chicago's towers on or adjacent to a podium for mid rises, even if it made the skyline less "impressive" from certain viewpoints. Bad podiums are a streetscape killer globally, but especially so in cities hit hard by abandonment, urban renewal, and car-centric planning and development.

It has gotten better in Chicago, but the bad ones that went tall 20+ years ago and quite bad.

[Wigs]

Buffalo can be easily mocked
but as I've stated many times I'd rather have a healthier core city than a shiny new skyscraper.

The city of Buffalo grew by 17,000 people from 2010-2020 with over 2,000 residential units currently under construction across the city.
Steely, remind us what was the city limits growth of all the rust belt cities?

[Doady]

Buffalo will probably have to build outward and fill in that huge urban prairie east of downtown before they start building upward again.

[benp]

Originally Posted by Doady

Buffalo will probably have to build outward and fill in that huge urban prairie east of downtown before they start building upward again.

The demand for new large office space just hasn't been enough to justify the costs of new construction in Buffalo. The availability of large floor plans in former industrial spaces outside of downtown has offset many potential new builds. The Larkin District has over 2M square feet of space in-use that has been converted from former soap factory and warehouses in the last 10-15 years and now is a growing multi-use district a couple of miles just outside of downtown, and is seeing new-build retail and residential recently.