Well, the track record of the housing authority doesn’t give me much confidence that it will be more urban than the recently published plan.
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It likely all hinges on where they decide to land on the spectrum between:
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Serving existing residents and making the community feel heard by meeting their requests/demands, which would likely result in something small-scale and similar to RHA’s prior redeveleopment projects
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Building as much affordable housing as possible, which will necessarily involve building a very large amount of market-rate housing to finance the construction of affordable housing
In other words, is housing the key deliverable, or is it process, community engagement, and feelings?
I hope RHA thinks long and hard about what the “H” in their name stands for.
Now: I am not opposed to community engagement, but it absolutely must not be allowed to undermine the scale and ambition of this critical project. Something along the lines of: “We are going to building 2000 units here. 750 of them will be affordable. Here are some possibilities of how we might do this. Which one do you prefer and why?” And of course, any comment suggesting downsizing the development should be summarily discarded.
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The irony of all this is that it’s really hard to mix the two. Because no matter what people say - if you put a 1BR apartment that costs $1700/mo for 760 sq ft and 1 parking spot beside a 2BR that costs $700/mo for 950 sq ft and 2 parking spots… it’s a tough sell to the general community (everyone is righteous until they’re jealous).
Seems like supplemental vouchers given to residents for rent based on income would be a better solution than the city’s horrible attempt at building housing - and citizens choose where they live using them. No different from nutritional assistance programs.
My voting place is Walnut Terrace and seeing that stupid statue in the middle of the development with the city councilors names on it makes me cringe. A blatant misuse of tax dollars and valuable downtown land, built without any actual thought or purpose.
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If people want suburban style housing then let’s build it in the suburbs.
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This would be a good model for Heritage Park: The Lindley, in Chevy Chase MD.
An 11 story 200 unit builing on 1.16 acrea. 40 units are <50% AMI affordable, 40 are 61-100%.
Not sure what’s up with the 50-60% AMI doughnut hole there, but you could fit 10 of these in the 11.6 acres of Heritage Park.
That’s 400 deeply affordable units, 400 workforce-range, and 1200 market rate.
2000 units.
Yes please.
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Not to mention that building actually looks decent as hell. Like a touched up version of the usual boring 5-over-1s we usually get, but likely built with actual steel and concrete. I know that one of the partners involved in the Heritage Park redevelopment (the Coach, I forget his name) mentioned he wants retail to feature heavily, to directly offer job opportunities to residents that live within the development, and that initial (awful) proposal featured none of that. So I take that initial proposal with a tiny grain of salt.
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My guess is that the previous proposal was the most favorable for the current residents and surrounding community. It would be nice if the city sold the site to The Community Builders, a national non-profit developer based out of Boston that builds mixed-income and affordable housing. The organization builds communities and then manages them. They also study the neighborhood impacts of each development and I recently completed an experiential project for their impact division late last year.
Link to their website:
https://tcbinc.org/communities/
They own the Pointes at Downtown neighborhood in Durham: https://www.pointesatdowntown.com/
Here’s one of their denser mixed-income developments in Boston, 225 Centre:
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Alright here we go. Gimme 7 of the Lindleys, 4 of the 225 Centres, and 6 Pointes at Downtown Durham. Add in a Chavis sized community center and a street grid and open space over a level of parking underground…
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BE. OUR. CITY. PLANNER. NOW. PLEASE. 
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Had an interesting conversation with MAB yesterday.
This may be known, but there is a new development partner on this project now and much higher hopes of a better site plan coming soon.
She also mentioned a few other important things:
- no funding at the moment for RCC expansion. They are looking into increasing occupancy tax for hotels to increase inter local funds, but the state legislature has it capped currently…
- she’s concerned with the possibility of too many fragmented music venues around DTR with a 3,500 cap venue at DTS, 5k at Red Hat, and ???k at Dix… she would like to see Walnut Creek amph relocated to DTS in a mixed use soccer/music venue (20k+). The city owns Walnut Creek.
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Bleeping fantastic update. Thank you!
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Bouncing off this a little re some conversations I’ve had about the lack of increased density at this site. They were having a really hard time getting the numbers to work in order to keep the same number of 30% AMI units.
I’d heard the developer was set in stone but hopefully what you heard was right and more up to date information!
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I had figured that if they relocate RedHat to the site next to the convention center they would scrap the venue at Dix. I agree those would be duplicative.
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Dix could be much larger though. RedHat downtown can’t replace Walnut Creek but an amphitheater in Dix could. I also would love to see that trestle from ridge to ridge (to the DixAmp) be constructed.
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@OakCityDylan Per Evan’s discussion with MAB:
Sounds like MAB/the city is considering the possibility of conglomerating the other music venues (aside from Red Hat) in DTS; with the AEG 3,500 cap indoor venue, and the possibility of a 20,000+ cap venue replacing Walnut Creek (which could double as the soccer stadium). Would seem to me that Dix would be out of the talks here, as Red Hat is (currently) around 5,000 cap; unless they went with a smaller outdoor music pavilion that could hold, say, 1,500, at Dix- otherwise they’re running the risk of too many similar capacity venues in too close proximity, thus resulting in undersold shows or underbooked venues.
Personally, I like the idea of leaving Dix be Dix Park first, with the ability to build temporary stages and use the larger open area as a festival grounds a la Dreamville.
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Yeah, what works for Millennium or Golden Gate park to throw festivals and create a scene should continue to work at Dix for Dreamville, etc…
On the one hand, it’d be nice to get something beautiful like the Greek or Wolf Trap in Dix proper - We do already have the musical chairs situation going on locally with venues dotted around town(s) when bands come through for shows. Guess I’ll just keep Burnsing in the background awaiting the Ritz to morph into something (anything) better that its current state in the Midtown Riverpark of the future…
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I think it could use just a little more height and be a little denser. Its better than whats there now, so i guess I cant complain.
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True. I guess I’m comparing it to the previous plan that only had 3-4 story garden-style apartment buildings.
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I love that they included Salisbury Sq. and Capital Sq. Honestly gives a better impression of how those will look than the actual renders.
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