What does this mean?
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The RenCen is not exactly tourist friendly as it has the potential to be. Many so called stores are closed on the weekends. There is nothing to do for tourist. The newly renovated lower level is a showcase for new cars, which is understandable being that they are trying to sell cars. However, there is nothing wrong with having a classic 57 Chevy on display or some classic GM Cars to be in the mix. When GM was on the Boulevard they had a few classic cars sprinkled throughout the lobby of the complex. This management company the GM uses only make the complex a total office building and just like every office building it is closed for business on weekends including anything for tourists to enjoy
With regards to the Book Building, I think it was announced or implied that the tower portion will be residential, and the attached block portion will be a hotel. That being the case, I am still thinking it will be a luxury hotel property to maximize the Tax Credit. There have been so many botique hotels opened recently [[which is great), and thus for another reason it would be nice to have some more diversity in hotel types downtown too.
Yeah, I think I agree, I'd rather have a taller building and a denser development, than have the luxury brand. My guess is that Gilbert wants both and that that's what they're still trying to figure out.
The Ren Cen has big interesting public spaces. I think one of the main tests of how interesting a space is is how kids react in it, and I've been there with kids and they find it really fun to traverse and explore. The elevator ride tour is cool. And sometimes people just want to eat at Panera, and they can do that and watch some freighters go by. Being GM's HQ makes it a point of interest and the cars are fun. To me it gives off a very "cosmopolitan big city" vibe.
The Hudsons project doesn't have any public space in it at all. All you can do to engage with it is walk past it on the sidewalk and look up at the tower. They took out the interesting interior spaces and the observation deck a long time ago. It's not even going to have a cool lobby. And while the building is going to be tall and it might be nice looking, for 99% of people it's just going to be another downtown skyscraper, while the Ren Cen's arrangement of towers makes it more distinctive.
I do agree though that the Ren Cen is way below its peak potential right now.
I agree with the abundance of unused space that the Rencen has. I differ on it being child friendly due to the unused space that it has. The renovated lower level could use some creativity in being more functional. It's just an oversized showroom with big LED screens. Management should always have a few vintage or classic cars in display and changing cars every 3 months or so. New cars could still be there as well but visitors and tourist, who the Rencen is also trying to attract, don't car about looking at next Year's model. They could visit any showroom to see that.
When the The Ren Cen was built in the 70s it was designed to be an attraction that would lure visitors to the building and be a "city within a city." A movie theater, many high end stores and restaurants were not just established for the convenience of the office workers but also to attract people back downtown. The problem with this is it became an isolated self-contained island that did nothing to improve downtown and instead had the opposite effect by sucking a lot of the office tenants and hotel business out of their older 1920s buildings which led to higher vacancy, less street life, stores closing and abandoned buildings.
The Hudson's Tower will be much different as it will just add to and enhance the central Woodward corridor. The less self-contained the tower is, the better. A 300 room 4-5 star Hyatt, Four Seasons, JW, etc. would be perfect for this location along with a few flagship stores.
The diagrams show where the office entrance is going to be and based on that it's just going to be a small interior space [[presumably attractive but not notably so) that leads to the elevators. There's also no programming reason to have large spaces, like the Guardian which is a bank branch or the Fisher which is a shopping mall.
The building will be interactive in the urban sense, in that it will have an active street level, but it won't be interactive in the landmark sense. It's not like Rockefeller Center, where you can go ice skating, or go to the observation deck, or go to an NBC taping, or to radio city, and where the design and arrangement of the buildings is iconic. There you can experience things that are intrinsic to its landmarkness. Yes at Rockefeller Center you can go shopping, but the shopping part isn't what makes it a landmark experience, a store is a store. Like, have those buildings on Woodward now become landmarks because they have an H&M in them? Hudsons isn't really creating "place" in terms of a person's qualitative experience it's more like a tall urban infill project than a landmark. And that's all fine, it's just that it's not really competing in the "iconic Detroit landmark" category.
Downtown already has tons of public spaces though. Our Rockefeller center is Campus Martius. We've also got Capital Park, Grand Circus park, Cadillac Square, etc.
I think you're nitpicking here. The building will undoubtedly be a landmark people will spend plenty of time around it especially with it's good urban design. We dont need another public indoor winter garden. One Campus Martius already has a massive lobby.
The topic came up because someone suggested that the Ren Cen would be threatened [["shaking in it’s boots anticipating the sucking sound that it will hear when businesses leave and go to the Hudson site") by the Hudsons project and my point was that the two aren't competing in the same categories, in terms of office hotel or landmark status.
I also agree that it doesn't need to have a public space. When there was that competition a few years ago a lot of entries tried to create a new public space, which I thought was silly because yeah there's like 6 parks within two blocks of the site. So I don't mind that it's not going down that route, although the observation deck would have been cool.
GM would have to cease just being an office complex for it’s workers only if it want to be part of the downtown scene. A new management team is needed. Classic cars sprinkled throughout the complex including the Winter Gardens and the Jefferson lobby would make it a destination for tourist and local visitors alike. The complex is terribly underutilized despite the recent renovations that were done to it in the past 5 years. The sucking sound will not be only caused by the Hudson’s development but the renovation of buildings in the immediate downtown area. Google Microsoft, and even Amazon had opened there offices in locations north of Jefferson and not in the RenCen. I had asked suggested to one of GM’s employees in the newly renovated lower level that they should put classic cars throughout the lower level and Jefferson foyer during the week or month of the Dream Cruise. His reply was “Our job is to sell cars that is why we have only new cars on display throughout the complex”. That attitude will cause the RenCen to continue to be an island off to itself
GM does currently have many different generations of Corvette in the very center of the river-level. I've seen it draw quite a few folks when I go walking there at lunch time.
If they were to turn the entire place into a classic car mecca it could potentially draw a lot more visitors and promote their products.
What are the odds the person commenting on all the Hudson's time lapses is just making stuff up? "I was told..." then offering some vague update like "the caissons went bad" or something has been "pushed back" with little additional detail. The comments getting stranger by the day.
I have wondered that as well, I keep waiting for something they say to actually happen... But it keeps getting delayed or something
Well, at some point [[probably in the not too distant future) they are going to finish the drilling of caissons. I haven’t bothered to count how many have actually been drilled & placed yet, but in watching the videos, there certainly have been a lot of them. Point being, they have been making slow progress on them, at a some point soon, they will all have been drilled and poured.
Then things will get interesting in seeing what their next steps are for the pit.
Agreed. At one point I was going to try and count all the caissons installed, just to see what number they are at, but either way they most likely will be finishing up in the nearish future. Sometimes I just get that "are we there yet?" mentality and get a little impatient to see other progress other than caissons being installed haha [[which I do know is a very important part of the building, just not particularly exciting to watch).
The planned total is 150 caissons for the block, and 18 for the tower.
Around 23 seconds into yesterday's video, you can see a crane place what appears to be the first "vertical" [[although subterranean) construction in the upper left corner.
https://youtu.be/MzvU8zfsRjw?t=23
It looks like a second piece of steel is put in place directly north of the first at the 2:54 mark.