Glenwood South Apartments: New Mixed-Use Mid Rise on Boylan

Bill
10/03 11:39 AM

I’m all for this but with greater density comes greater responsibility for picking up dog shit, lest the Cameron Park folks go crazy as their lovely parks become dog toilets.

smitty
10/03 04:03 PM

How is this building and parking deck good for the environment?  The only thing this building is good for is the developer.  Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Mark
10/03 04:37 PM

@smitty
This building and parking deck are not good for the environment. However, this building is better for the environment than spreading this much housing out over tens of acres of undeveloped land and then having everyone drive into town to go to work. The latter scenario is by far the dominant pattern of development.

Jenna
10/03 08:26 PM

More housing density in this area will also (I hope) attract more retailers to the area—maybe one day the coveted downtown grocery.

Brent
10/04 09:12 AM

bummer. i dig a couple of those older buildings. guess im that guy.

RaleighRob
10/04 02:56 PM

Glad to see this coming about.  Downtown definitely needs more apartments.  I just hope they are more reasonably-priced than Tucker or Hue.

Synaesthete
10/04 05:10 PM

The homogeneous design of these new condos certainly bothers me.  I’d imagine these bland mega-condos being pushed a little further out from the downtown area, like housing projects for the middle class.  As you move closer to downtown, architectural styles should become more diverse and unique, also incorporating historical structures wherever possible. Densely populated downtown urban environments aren’t necessary from either an economic or environmental perspective.  These mixed-use developments can be dropped anywhere.  The only remaining purpose for a downtown is to house the urban spirit of a place, combining history with contemporary culture and creating a shared space for citizens to shop and socialize.  I also tend to believe only privileged citizens and those who actively contribute to the soul of the city should be living downtown.  The common middle class worker would be just as happy living further on the outskirts.  A richly diverse downtown can then be allowed to thrive and serve as a cultural retainer with character.

RaleighRob
10/05 08:12 AM

^ Only privileged citizens allowed to live downtown and not common middle class worker?  As a downtown resident who is lower-middle class, I have to say:  “Up yours, you snob!”  I deserve to be able to live in the heart of my city as much as any rich yuppie.  There are plenty of luxury condos downtown and a good chunk are sitting empty.  Normal everyday people want to live downtown yet have trouble finding reasonable-priced apartments of which there are too few of.  Criticize the design if you want to, but there is demand for downtown apartments for sure.
.....
Of course, you could just be trolling in which case this just allowed me to vent to a non-existent person. 

jay_sikes
10/05 11:32 AM

Sorry Synaesthete,
Your comments on these boards are usually pretty well reasoned and intelligent. But the last half of that post stinks of the worst kind of elitism I’ve heard in a while. Not to mention, it is very difficult to figure out your point.

A person’s economic situation and the degree to which they want to contribute-to/participate-in the culture of a city are two completely different things. There are lower, middle, and upper income people living out in the suburbs, because they WANT to live in the suburbs - they apparently like it and its convenient for them.

Right now, the majority of downtown is occupied by the two extremes of the spectrum. I think many middle class “workers” would like to live downtown if it was affordable. The fact that they’re middle class has nothing to do with their willingness to participate in the “urban spirit of a place”. On the contrary, I’d suggest that it is often the very rich and very poor that are less willing or less able to do so.

I think any project that increases the density and economic diversity of downtown Raleigh should be celebrated. Its too bad the Milton Small buildings have to be demolished, but they’re two very low density buildings on a very desirable site. From a design point of view, the proposed building is fine. Not great, but I wouldn’t say it is ugly. Raleigh needs density and we can argue about the aesthetic minutia later. Unfortunately, this city has neither a plethora of good-quality, [re]usable, existing/historical buildings, nor a real market for contemporary design. So we’re left with this. As we say in the architecture field . . . it is what it is.

Synaesthete
10/05 04:39 PM

^Sorry, I definitely didn’t elaborate on my meaning.  I have a hard time fitting everything in and hate writing huge essays on message boards.  I had a feeling some of those words would tick people off, classism is a dirty topic these days.  However, I believe in a new type of classism in which there is a more harmonious relationship among the classes.  An economy is healthy whenever you have a good distribution of economic classes and a healthy degree of upward mobility.  What makes the economy move is when some lower class people have the ability to jump to the middle class, middle class people jump to the upper class, etc.  It creates an economic energy gradient that stimulates forward movement in our society, not unlike the potential gradient across the membrane of your heart that makes it beat.
I believe that if everyone were to become middle class citizens, we’d basically have a massive societal heart attack.  In fact I believe this is partly what’s contributing to our current economic situation, because there’s currently a massive middle class and no upward mobility.
We should build our cities to support a healthy class distribution.
I’m also distinguishing “downtown” from “high density living”.  I think you can have high density living anywhere, and it doesn’t have to be “downtown”.  I believe in a downtown that is a retainer and showcase of culture and a marketplace for ideas and products.  In a healthier economy and with a healthy, thriving downtown, property gets expensive.  High cost should be synonymous with high value.  The privileged would be the ones to afford it simply because it’s valubale.
The existence of bland high density residential buildings is a byproduct of a downtown that doesn’t have high value.  If it continues, we risk filling in our downtown with a higher density version of the suburbs, and the downtown concept loses its relevance, and society chokes.  We lose the economic and cultural richness of a downtown that offers a high value and is an inspirational element that stimulates upward mobility.
Of course we need affordable housing downtown and it should never be a playground for the rich.  However, I don’t think affordable housing should include such large-scale housing for the bulk of the lower- and middle-classes.  It should house an “alternative” class of people who contribute to the downtown ‘directly’ (from waiters to artists to rickshaw drivers and as-yet unforeseen contributors).  For the rest of society, I would rather see affordable and efficient living communities outside downtown proper, with good transportation for getting people in and out.  The suburbs should have well-built communities in which business and residential are inter-twined, much like the popular vision of our downtown.  However, downtown itself should house less of this, providing more of an outlet for heritage and new ground-level cultural development that comes from a high density of inspiration (not just a high density of population).  The current popular vision of a downtown is to attempt to combine the qualities of the suburbs and the qualities of downtown, and I think this vision is misdirected.  I think we should focus on each model separately, and imagine how they can better work together, and not attempt to blur the division between the two.
This idea is one I’m still working out for myself and it’s not fully formulated, but I feel that what I’m imagining is possible and I think many of you would approve of my vision, if perhaps I were better able to communicate it.  Can you kind of see what I’m getting at here?  It’s a pretty big leap from how we’re currently seeing things.

arthurb3
10/05 10:44 PM

When I moved to downtown 10 years ago at night you would not go to certain areas at night. Now there are neoyuppies out everywhere but along with them has come high rents and over priced resturants.

JohnnyLately
10/06 10:33 AM

Got it Syn,
How about we all just share with you our station in life and you let us know where we should/may live.  Don’t know how we’ve gotten by without your Utopian view of how we all should live.

Carl
10/06 11:02 AM

Hey !!! Hey !!!
Cut Synaesthete a break…
He said he doen’t like to write long essays on message boards.
As can be seen above.

Dick Hertz
10/06 11:21 AM

Syn wins most pretentiouis post of the year award.  Congrats on your false sense of entitlement.  All of these criticisms will undoubtedly go over your head, as you will write it off as the rest of us not being deep enough to understand your ramblings.

Synaesthete
10/06 02:52 PM

I’m suggesting we be honest about wealth distribution and class division.  Rather than sweep it under the table or try to distribute the wealth evenly, we should face it head on and embrace it as a strength in our society.  If there’s a Utopian ideology, it’s that we can pull down the rich people and send all the poor kids to college, put everyone together in a big hive community, and everyone will be happy.  Why can’t we make a world where it doesn’t suck to be poor, highly motivated people can move up in society, and our cities are beautiful monuments to the best of art and ingenuity?  These ideas are only offensive if you see class division as a rigid structure.  If you can see a world in which class can be readily traversed in a way that pushes our society forward, it’s more true to the natural tendency of society to divide based on class and wealth.

^How are any of these responses criticism, there’s no content to them at all.  Why doesn’t anyone have a real discussion online anymore?

Phillo
10/06 03:42 PM

“Why doesn’t anyone have a real discussion online anymore?”

I think you can go find old usenet threads to find that the answer to that question is “no one ever did”.

JohnnyLately
10/06 03:43 PM

WHAT???  Is this Animal Farm?

Dick Hertz
10/07 08:39 AM

Stoned rants about an imaginary utopia don’t qualify as real discussion either.

matt
10/07 08:44 AM

Here’s why: I cannot have a “discussion” with someone who thinks that one of the new paradigms is a world where “it doesn’t suck to be poor”. That’s not even discussable!

If it didn’t suck to be poor, the rich would volunteer to do so. If it wasn’t so all-fired wonderful to be rich, the poor would stop dreaming of being rich. The whole thing’s set up so the downtrodden aspire to be the oppressors.

Our class structures ARE rigid. The filters are all clogged, there’s no permeation.

Marky Mark
10/07 06:57 PM

I’m a common middle class worker, and I would love to be able to rent a bland mega condo downtown and contribute absolutely nothing to the “urban spirit.”

Synaesthete
10/08 02:36 PM

Our class structures aren’t ‘that’ rigid.  There is something to the American idea that you can rise from nothing, on your own merits.  Right now things are clogged because way too much money is up top and our middle class is growing like a malignant tumor.  It will never completely not suck to be poor, but being poor shouldn’t mean impoverished and out-of-work.  One of the reasons the Chinese are able to accomplish their position in the global economy is because they actually have instated a rigid two-class system of rural and urban people.  Rural people aren’t allowed to get a lot of urban jobs, but they are allowed in to manufacturing, which is the source of their cheap labor force.  In a way I’m suggesting we accomplish something similar, but to grow that economy like a garden rather than build it like a wall, just enough to create a healthy wealth and labor distribution.  At the same time, we attempt to create opportunities all the way up the ladder, and allow those so motivated to climb it the opportunity to do so.

Our cities are indicative of the state of our society, so to me these bland mega condos are evidence of cancerous middle class growth that is not at all healthy.

arthurb3
10/10 05:16 AM

Another bland, stucco, condo/apartment building with rents for $1000 a month!

jay_sikes
10/10 10:44 AM

Bland? It’s an apartment building (a quite large one) set back into a neighborhood, not a cultural arts center. Not everything can be the Guggenheim. I would say its adequate. Raleigh simply does not have a stock pile of dense, usable, “background” buildings. So creating an urban fabric where it doesn’t exist is very difficult. In fact, multifamily residential is a fairly rigid building type that is dictated primarily by two factors - what physically complies to zoning/city approval and what the developer likes and wants to pay for.

Also, it’s pretty useless to criticize this design based on one vague marketing rendering, taken from an impossible perspective. More information [context] is needed. We’re all assuming stucco or EIFS because it seems to be the default for new projects in Raleigh. I certainly hope the developers go with a richer material palette.

It sucks that the Milton Small buildings are being demolished, but I really don’t understand the backlash against this project. People say they want density and walkable neighborhoods and affordable options, but when they see what that looks like they turn into Paul Goldberger [or a very bizarre-pseudo-spiritual social theorist in Synaesthete’s case]. What exactly do you all expect from this kind of project? What do you want it to be? and how do you think your voice can be heard in the process? Complaining on these boards after the fact doesn’t count. People have all these heroic ideals about architecture/urban design/aesthetics, but that rarely meshes with reality. Call up your favorite local celebrity architect and ask them why they don’t work on urban projects in this city. Just be prepared for their answer.

JZ
10/12 07:27 AM

I’m going to by-pass the philosophical/economic discussion here return to some of the comments at the top of the thread:  I would support the notion that higher density at this scale is more appropriate and more sustainable, however…..we have enough open brownfield parcels (i.e. parking lots) to find this choice by the developer a disappointment.  These are some simple, well-detailed buildings from half a century ago and I think they deserved a bit more time with us.  There were other choices for more downtown housing.  A lack of imagination and, perhaps, willingness to take more risk, yielded this insensitive solution. To the point about risk,  I would further suggest that, given the economic climate, a developer is looking for a “sure thing” in order to secure financing.  As “Teddy Bass” said, “Where there’s a will…”.  In this case, I would think there wasn’t enough “f__ing will”.