Originally Posted by
royce
Gistok, I doubt BCBSM is going to move from their Lafayette location, but it would be a benefit to that area if they were to move and make way for residential and retail. That data center is an abomination to that portion of Lafayette.
In hindsight, they had enough room to build the data center just south of their tower building, towards Congress Street. Instead, they constructed the data center on a block long surface parking lot on Fort Street.
That part of Fort Street ran into St. Antoine. On several occasions when I would park in that surface parking lot to go to Floods Bar and Grill, I would think to myself, "This whole block would look great if they built some Brownstone-type townhouses." On Lafayette there was a small parking area behind Flood's, but the rest of the block, I believe, was also a surface parking lot. Townhouses along that stretch of Lafayette would also have been nice. Even now when you walk pass the data center on Lafayette, there's all this wasted sidewalk/plaza that no one uses. A missed opportunity for sure.