I gotta be honest, I think that’d be an improvement over the current color scheme of… grey, darker grey, beige, and darker beige 
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For as awful as this is, it could actually be much, much worse. You don’t even know how much worse.
Recall for a moment this 2020-era proposal at 3402 Hillsborough:
Quite the looker, ain’t she? And believe it or not, it can be even worse than that…
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That LEGITIMATELY looks like a prison LOL
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Across the street from that, CityPlat got a rezoning approved for the Arby’s site. Up 7 stories and anticipate building between 320 to 350 residential units. TBD if this gets off the ground given some of their other Hillsborough St holdings.
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Close your eyes and picture what the budget for a student housing project looked like.
I assure you, they can afford the pennies it takes to build a better expansion joint detail. And the idea that student housing is necessarily low quality is not true when you look at student housing nationwide. I posted about this earlier in this thread.
But the point I was making was even IF they didn’t want to spend the time, the most egregious part about this is that they could’ve literally just shifted the joint over to a less disruptive part of the facade. No monetary impact whatsoever.
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But seriously, it’s like someone designed the building infrastructure and internals and another person/firm did the exterior and they didn’t compare plans…ever.
Exactly. Which is perplexing because most projects these days use BIM, which basically layers all of our consultants’ 3D digital models onto each other to ease coordination and identify clashes. They may have been working with 90s workflows on this one.
But I think this is actually a perfect illustration of what architects do. Yes, we design beautiful and functional buildings, but we’re also project managers who are in charge of coordinating all of the various trades so we don’t end up with shit like this. If your engineer throws a dozen louvers of varying sizes at you, you find a way to incorporate them into the building design so it’s not noticeable. You don’t just cover your eyes and hope for the best lmao
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sorry for the poor image, but cityplat (
) was approved for 7 stories on a conglomerated lot on hillsborough street across from snoopy’s… let’s hope cityplat actually develops something here… my guess is the empty lots across the street will ask for a reasoning from 3 to 5 stories:crossed_fingers:t2:
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My thoughts exactly. Just glad someone else brought it up. 
No, you can’t just shift it over. The expansion joint had to hit between units inside the building, between party walls. If you want to move it over, then you fuck up the unit square footage of the double unit plan west, and the single unit plan east becomes useless dead space because you lost all the bathroom clearances.
Obviously it can’t literally move. I was talking about shifting it within the facade composition…
Even if they didn’t want to spend the time or money to detail it discretely, they couldn’t just… compose the facade to have it align with a material change?
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*Good architects
Which like many other professions is in a state of flux right now it seems.
It depends on whether you want the facade to shift to align with the joint and not align with the brick column wrap below or you want a column sticking out into a retail space. And this effort is all for free, and without a time extension on the deadline you have to meet so students can move in on time.
And you can’t coordinate the louver sizes in the retail space because there’s no retail tenants yet, the retail upfits happen after the building is built. And again, whatever you do is for free and you don’t have any schedule float left, same with structural, mechanical, interiors, etc.
The building is obviously ugly and not well designed. But it holds a bunch of students and is pretty functional and should contribute to the urban neighborhood along Hillsborough. I guess the reason this came up was because of the failure of the retail to get established here, right?
The reason for that is the bland sidewalk experience. And here’s your most prominent corner:
Even an ugly buiding can have successful retail. They should’ve incorporated a porch or outdoor amentity here and even tried to get East Village to open back up in the new building. Other retail along the block would’ve followed if that corner was a hub of activity.
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Oh, it’s a big ol’ stinky piece of $h!t, full-stop. Looks like a f**king storage unit building from this angle… 
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These are all absolute basic, routine tasks of architects that we are paid to anticipate and plan for, and most of your explanations are complete rubbish. You do not need to have a retail tenant to anticipate louver sizing and placement. We always do this for spec buildings, and the same happened here – those louvers have been there since the building was finished, far before tenants were selected.
Obviously, making these changes at the end of design would be completely impractical and result in delays and depleted fees. But that’s exactly why they should’ve been coordinated during the design process, like we do on literally every project.
I’m not sure why you’re so hell bent on making excuses for incompetence and poor planning. Somehow, other buildings – even low budget-- don’t look like absolute dog shit. We must be magicians or something. That’s all I’m going to say on this.
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My recollection is that East Village was going to move into this building when the demo was announced, but sadly this did not come to pass.
Also, wasn’t this wonder a JDavis design… 
?
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Yeah, East Village was supposed to reopen in this - or an adjacent development. My issue with that plan at the time was that it wouldn’t really be East Village if it didn’t have the deck and was just a bland bar stuck in a cold/dark shell. I wish they’d already had another site in mind that fit their aesthetic when they closed/sold.
I think Stanhope and the Standard look better and have much better looking retail that is street facing - however they’ve also had issues getting tenants in and staying long term. The Standard has a good corner retail spot and I don’t think they’ve even had any retail plans announced aside from a failed college bar concept a few years back.
Would love to see something of note open on this side of Hillsborough and then something like Sammy’s open in the old movie theater spot further down.
Unrelated - but Red Line Beer & Wine announced they were moving/expanding next door into the Groucho’s spot that came available after Groucho’s closed.
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I may be in a position to redevelop this section of Hillsborough St soon. Not this year, but hopefully the following. As a former student, I can’t stand what has become of this street. We need a signature State sports bar, think “Top of the Hill” but NC State edition.
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Agreed on all of that. Was hoping these apartments and the resulting additional foot traffic would encourage some more interesting retail and F&B commercial development/tenanting on this end of the street. The other end has the old school charm with Mitch’s and PR - and then further down you’ve got newer options like Gussies, Wolfe & Porter, etc. now.
But this side of Hillsborough is totally devoid of all character. A revolving door of strip shopping shown in the picture you posted, empty/uninspiring retail under the apartments, and then that linen/uniform cleaning service. As a big baseball fan - I hate that there’s no where to walk to on this side of Hillsborough from Doak Field.
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