Here’s an interesting resource: Comparing Campus Plans from Ayers/Saint/Gross, a leading planner of university campuses nationally. Figure-ground drawings for scores of college campuses nationwide, drawn to the same scale, and selected statistics about the schools’ size — presented side by side. Academic competition on another level.
Monthly Archives: March 2004
Lessons from 4-story buildings
As part of its 1992 CityPlan, Vancouver began directing new residential growth into neighborhood commercial corridors. This approach makes eminent sense: many commercial corridors have been in decline since the streetcar lines disappeared, and all those new residents have to go somewhere.
C-2 is the standard commercial zoning in Vancouver neighborhoods; it was changed to allow for 50′ tall, four story buildings with ground floor retail. After the first few dozen C-2 mixed-use buildings were completed, neighbors, especially in single-family neighborhoods, began complaining — principally about shadows, but also about noise and other issues common where the transition in neighborhood scale is poorly handled.
In 2002, the city reviewed C-2 zoning’s urban design and released a series of recommendations, many affecting how the buildings should step down in the back, to avoid towering over neighbors on the other side of the alley.
These recommendations are broadly applicable elsewhere — especially for B-2/C-2 or B-3/C-3 zoning here in Chicago, which broadly speaking permit almost identical buildings. Although Chicago is a more challenging environment for underground parking, our parking ratios are generally not as high as those in Vancouver.
Vancouver’s best known in urban design circles for the glassy highrise-and-townhouse combos set amidst parks ringing its downtown. Four-story buildings may be nowhere near as flashy, but ultimately provide another housing option at a more human scale. Four stories is a sweet height for commercial corridors: tall enough to provide substantial density and streetwall definition, but short enough to duck under the high-cost world of steel frames and elevators.
Hummer sales tanking
“Nationally, sales for the H2 fell 21 percent in February, Reuters reported, the sixth straight month of falling sales compared with the previous year.” Perhaps there is an outer limit to American’s appetite for avarice.
The article sadly leaves some assertions unchallenged:
Howard Drake, an owner of the Hummer dealership in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, said his sales were down in January and February, only because he did not have enough supply.
Every once in a while, he acknowledged, the culture wars seep onto the lots of the dealerships. Mr. Drake said he was approached by a well-known actress, whose name he declined to share.
“She told me she wanted to buy a hybrid, and she was concerned about the Hummer and its effect on the environment,” Mr. Drake recalled. “I asked where she lived. She said Beverly Hills. I said, ‘Out of curiosity: How big is your house?’
“She said: ‘What does that matter? It’s 20,000 square feet.’ ”
He said he replied: “I don’t know what’s less correct. Having three people live in a 20,000-square-foot house, with a pool and heaters and air-conditioners. Or me driving my Hummer 500 miles a month.”
Mr. Drake’s house, he said, is 3,000 square feet.
Giant SUVs are distasteful, dangerous, and deadly for scores of reasons beyond mere energy consumption (although this is not to condone wasteful energy use at home). For instance, the article obliquely mentions safety:
The environmental campaigner Laurie David, the wife of Larry David of the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm, worked herself into a lather not long ago over a Hummer-driving mother in the parking lot of the Crossroads School in Los Angeles. She rolled down her Prius window to share her displeasure. “I said,” Mrs. David recalled, ” ‘Are you crazy to bring this car into this parking lot? Do you understand how dangerous it is to the kids you can’t see?’ She stared at me blankly.”
[found at NYT]
Postmodern intimacy
With the legal status of marriages between American queers (whether writ in Amsterdam or Vancouver or San Francisco) in serious doubt as legislatures and courts struggle over local or national solutions, a strange new option has emerged for embattled relationships: marriage as a postmodern intimacy avoidance strategy.
Pretty CVSes
The Charrette Center has compiled photos of CVSes built to the sidewalk from around the country, as ammunition for the next time they propose a parking lot out front.
Dominick’s downtown
Becky Yerak’s column in today’s Trib describes the sales success of Dominick’s (a Safeway unit) in downtown Chicago. The economics are too good to give up, even if theft is an issue when the groceries are upstairs and the employees are downstairs.
(And yes, I have photos of the Lincoln Park and West Loop stores here).
Dominick’s thinks outside its deli
?BECKY YERAK
Published March 2, 2004When Dominick’s planned the deli section of a store in Lincoln Park, its eyes were bigger than shoppers’ appetite for convenience food.
“We used to talk about `home-meal replacement.’ That was the wave of the future. Everything you needed in a box …” recalled Michael Mallon, Dominick’s vice president of real estate. “Believe me, there’s a lot of business in home-meal replacement, but not as much as we originally set up in the store.”
So the Safeway Inc. chain downsized the deli, added a Starbucks and a bakery, and watched sales rise 20 percent. “More importantly, profits picked up also,” Mallon said at an International Council of Shopping Centers event last week.
Dominick’s landed the spot at Fullerton and Sheffield Avenues because it agreed to build a two-level store in the mixed-use development, owned by DePaul University.
“It’s the first two-level grocery store in the Chicago area,” Mallon said. The store does “in excess of $500 per square foot.”
But “shrinkage”–stolen merchandise–is a bigger problem in a two-story store. In fact, Dominick’s labor costs at the site are 2 percentage points higher than at single-level stores.
As a result, developers seeking tenants for a two-level store should brace for tougher rent talks. Nonetheless, “we’re looking at other two-level locations in Chicagoland,” Mallon said.
Meanwhile, near the West Loop, sales at Dominick’s at Madison and Halsted Streets “are way beyond our expectations,” Mallon said. “We’re doing in excess of $550 a square foot.”
A Dominick’s going up downtown at Columbus Drive, Illinois Street and St. Clair Street will be “something Chicago has not seen,” Mallon added. With roof-top parking for 150 cars, a cart escalator, and valet and dropoff, it “will be the flagship store for Dominick’s,” he said.
The immediate area’s average household income exceeds $150,000.
New job
I started a new job two weeks ago, so apologies for not posting in a more timely manner. It might be imprudent to disclose for whom, but suffice to say that I’ll have even more time to think about urban affairs even if I have less time to write about it here.
Also, in case it wasn’t clear before: opining solely for myself (at the bottom of the left nav bar) means that all opinions expressed here are solely mine and do not represent the opinions of any organizations I may be affiliated with. If a particular article republished here was written by me for an organization, I’ll note that.
west north 