haltcatchfire
Senior Member
I prefer the Beltline one ways because sometimes if I squint a bit I can almost feel like I’m in Midtown Manhattan.
Where's the vomit emoji when you need it. Strategic really pushes the envelope when it comes to heaping piles of garbage.
It's a pretty good location, with the Coop right there. I'm guessing it's pretty much all one bedroom units; the building is around 8400 gross sq ft per floor, which at 66 units with the ground floor retail comes in 760 sq ft total per unit; less circulation space it's probably closer 600 sq ft per. I think there's potentially a gap in the market -- there are a number of buildings (Versus, Arch, Metropolitan) that are new with all the bells and whistles, calling themselves "luxury" and charging $1500+ for a one-bedroom, and a number of others from the 70s and 80s that are super-basic with no laundry and often no dishwasher and can only get $1000 for a one bedroom. But there's not much in the middle ground. I could see a market for people who don't need a health club or balconies, but don't want to carry their clothes to the laundromat or live in something really dated. I could also see it potentially in the furnished short-term executive rental space; I wouldn't want to live forever without a balcony, but if I was spending a month here on work, I'd rather have a full apartment than a hotel room.
I think people overestimate the importance of one way streets. There are very few studies that point to any benefit to transitioning one way streets to two way streets. And further any benefit that is realized is usually lost to a host of confounding variables such as other urban/pedestrian development improvements that happen concurrently with the one to two way transition.
The one way nature of the traffic flow isn't the problem here. It's the fact the sidewalks are narrow, the street frontages suck, there aren't a lot of retail bays that can support restaurants, and so on. If this area had the Cadillac sidewalks of East Village and was full of retail bays with built out kitchens, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
This project will at least help move people into the area, which will in turn help support the first level retail.