Crowne Plaza could add second tower

[gumby]

Looks like a 7 story Parking structure is being proposed as well.

No more could. I sometimes watch the City Council planning and economic development committe meetings it's a great way to stay ahead of what's happening. Not less than hour ago did I hear they made a zoning change application for a new tower that'll comeback for their review later.

The application is in their referal. documents No renderings, but go to page 25 and it lays out the basic details. 448,000 sq ft, 28 stories and approx 338 ft. tall

http://www.detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/d...D%201-9-18.PDF

[Hypestyles]

I'm curious about the logistics of building a new tower on that site. How much room would it take up?

[Jason]

I'm curious about the logistics of building a new tower on that site. How much room would it take up?

Like I said to get a tower with the typical floor having the square footage described, the tower would extend from the sidewalk on Larned to the sidewalk on Jefferson, and would occupy the current plaza space.

It's possible to get the numbers to work in other ways, but the numbers match up with putting the tower exactly where you'd think it'd go.

[DetroitSoldier]

Like I said to get a tower with the typical floor having the square footage described, the tower would extend from the sidewalk on Larned to the sidewalk on Jefferson, and would occupy the current plaza space.

It's possible to get the numbers to work in other ways, but the numbers match up with putting the tower exactly where you'd think it'd go.

Hopefully this would mean a reconfiguration of the existing base structure. There would be great value in a front door that faces the convention center and retail opportunities along Washington between Jefferson and Larned. The current wall is imposing and does not provide value to the urban fabric at a critical intersection at the entrance to the convention center.

[Lowell]

Yep Crain's is reporting that it is back in motion....

Construction would start this fall or winter and be complete in 2021, a document provided to the Detroit City Council's Planning and Economic Development standing committee says. When complete, there would be about 150 permanent workers in the tower.

Gerardo Carreno, asset manager for Crowne Plaza, said the tower would have approximately 498 rooms and cost north of $100 million. Crain's first reported on the renewed conversation about a second tower in 2015.

A Detroit City Clerk staff member said the standing committee today referred the planned project to the city planning commission, which will review it, prepare a report and refer the matter back to City Council.

Architectural Design Inc. in Youngstown, Ohio, is listed as the project architect.

A second tower had been part of the hotel's original plan when it opened in 1965. It reopened in July 2013 after a $5 million renovation.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...gnews-20180111

[EGrant]

Crain's claiming to have the "scoop" on this story, but I read it here first...

[Tramhamck]

As exciting as the news is, a trip over to Architectural Design's website has really lowered my expectations for how the final product will look. Seems they do quite a bit of work with the hotel chains but most of it is very... Uninspiring. It looks as though they do a lot of renovating of existing hotels and additions to structures that have already been built. The stuff they're designing themselves is pretty bland and would look at home off a freeway exit in the middle of nowhere. Some of the buildings they've done are just outright ugly and I'm honestly surprised they were the firm selected because a project like this frankly seems to be out of their league. It doesn't appear that they have experience designing high rises from the work listed, so take that as you will.

They do have the Crowne Plaza listed on there. No renderings of the new tower though.

http://architecturaldesigninc.com

[K-slice]

Always thought this place was designed like a mini-RenCen. Built up on a podium, no real access or interaction with the street except on one side that is made for vehicle drop off/pick up. Hopefully with developments like the Apparatus Room and Adient moving their HQ less then a block away they see the value of having sidewalk accessible spaces.

[Scottathew]

Like I said to get a tower with the typical floor having the square footage described, the tower would extend from the sidewalk on Larned to the sidewalk on Jefferson, and would occupy the current plaza space.

Nothing wrong with some great streetwall!

[3WC]

As Crain's points out, the Ponch was originally to have two towers. However, the Gershenson family, which developed it, did not think a second tower would be profitable and abandoned the idea.

As a result, the Ponch missed out on most convention business, even though it was the closest hotel to the Convention Center, because it did not have the rooms or facilities to accommodate large groups, which went to the Ren Cen Marriott.

Whoever builds that second tower, if one is built, has got to be pretty gutsy in my opinion, because in effect there will be two hotels, one more modern, which is where most people will want to stay, rather than in the older tower.

[iheartthed]

Always thought this place was designed like a mini-RenCen. Built up on a podium, no real access or interaction with the street except on one side that is made for vehicle drop off/pick up. Hopefully with developments like the Apparatus Room and Adient moving their HQ less then a block away they see the value of having sidewalk accessible spaces.

I'm not an architect, but I think hotels are built like this in general to discourage from people wandering through when they should not be there.

[hybridy]

Renderings from Planning Commission









[Post edited by moderator to make images display.]

[mikeg19]

Renderings from Planning Commission

Are they invisible?

[southen]

It's like a sick joke ha.

[gumby]

I like that it appears that there will be some retail space along Washington instead of the blank fake brick wall that is there now.

[southen]

Meh. I was hoping for something a bit more but it is pretty innocuous. I like that it keeps some of the same attributes of the original tower but I fear it will immediately look dated as opposed to a brand new hotel. It would be nice if they opened up some of their rooftop spaces for hotel patrons and greened things up a bit.

I wish they would have included a rendering of the garage they wish to build but I did notice it looks like they would like to add a pedestrian walkway directly into Cobo.

Overall it will be a good addition to the city and it further densifies the core while adding more activity.

[mikeg19]

In that 1st rendering you can see where they included the elevated enclosed walkway from COBO to the new tower. I wonder if that is finalized or just conceptual.

[Dexlin]

The garage is on floors 3-9 of the podium, though these rough renderings don't show that like they should. It's also not a done deal that the hotel will look anything like the original tower. It's a place-holder design.

[1953]

I kind of want the towers to match...can't they make them match? lol

[hybridy]

Are they invisible?

im not sure why, but when referenced images from outside site [[not embedded directly) seem to take a few mins before they become visible on the forum...dont ask me why - OR LOWELL FIXED IT !

[Jason]

It's hard for me to understand what's happening in the renderings.

A few months ago I thought the parking was a new garage across the street to the north. Now it seems like it's in the tower?

It's directly described as being 28 floors, 19 of hotel, and 9 of parking. The tower portion of the rendering shows 23 floors. Maybe some of those aren't hotel rooms [[18,000 square feet of event space) and some of the floors of parking are underground?

There's also 3,040 square feet of retail, which in the rendering appears to be on Washington. Dividing that by the roughly 150 foot length would make the retail space only about 20 feet deep. Maybe some of the windows are just shallow display windows along part of the stretch?

It also seems like on the Larned side, the new portion extends either to or beyond the existing building. If it's flush with the existing building then the valet lane has been shortened. If it's extended beyond the existing building then in the rendering the building exists in the same space as the sidewalk.

Also, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the meetings where the "giant clunky blind concrete walls painted beige and hot pink" were discussed. And the way the tower is plonked down on the base...

So overall this is kind of confusing to me. We'll see how it turns out.

[NSortzi]

The reason why the parking decks aren't shown is because they aren't designed yet. These renderings are preliminary and are subject to change. They were used in the proposal to the city government a few months back, in March I believe. The building is not fully designed just yet.

Jason, do you remember where you heard the garage was going across the street? Honestly, I'd rather a new garage with first floor retail gets built on that surface lot instead of at the base of the tower.

[Dexlin]

The city planning commission will send you the renderings and elevations if you ask. The elevation drawings clearly show 28 floors [[ground floor + 2nd floor ballrooms and such, parking on floors 3 through 8, and 18 floors of hotel rooms). What's also clear is that to decently blend in the parking with the rest of the building that the top half of the garage is sheathed in the same glass as the hotel rooms, while the podium half is in the visual "podium." The base is barely taller than the existing one; I'm not getting the idea that it's somehow incompatible with the existing tower, specifically given that the current tower is situated the way it is on the existing podium because it was supposed to have a twin. Now it will. Now, whether the architecture of the original hotel is nice is a whole other issue, but this second tower isn't haphazardly plunked down or out of character with the existing property.

Yes, the renderings need a bit of refining. No, they are not terribly representing what they are going to build.

[Jason]

Nsortzi: Unfortunately I never heard it anywhere and it's not true. In one of the documents there's a section for parking that's separate from the rest of the description. I didn't think it was practical to fit that much parking under the new tower so I assumed that they were building a garage, and the garage area described matched a hypothetical garage on the parking lot. This was when details were still sparse.

Building a parking garage there would have made a lot more sense though. I'm guessing they tried and the owner didn't want to sell, or maybe doing all that would complicate the project too much. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd tried to buy it in years past just to use it as a convenient surface lot.

It's still incredible to me that it's worthwhile to cram the parking in the tower. Not only are they spending their money on parking spaces instead of hotel rooms, the garage makes them put the stairs and elevators in the corners of the towers, so they've lost half of their corner rooms.

Drexlin: Thank you for clearing that up. Do you happen to have their e-mail address? I tried cc-cpc@detroitmi.gov and it instantly returned with an error.

What I mean about the tower being plunked on the base is that they way the original building was designed, and the way things like that are designed in general, is that you have the podium and tower articulated as distinct volumes, which hover and slide past each other in a dynamic and functional composition. Now, the base of the original doesn't do a fantastic job of this anyway, but the new parts do it horribly. Lever House in NYC is a better example.

[Zads07]

Looks like the renderings above are the official renderings, according to Kirk Pinho of Crain's.

https://twitter.com/kirkpinhoCDB/sta...40929153683456