L Building to Get Covered in Art Banners
We all know the unfortunate history of the L Building on South McDowell Street in Downtown that was originally going to be a Wake County parking deck wrapped by commercial and office spaces. Despite building the parking deck and due to the less than fortunate economy, Empire Properties was never able to gather enough tenants and funds to build the more aesthetically pleasing parts of the building. Therefore, we have been stuck with two massive blank concrete facades for a while now.
Empire decided they would put in some landscaping and paint the building to make it a bit less of a characterless frontage, but the Raleigh Appearance Commission still thought this was not enough. They pushed Empire to come up with other solutions for the building and it worked. Now, there will be a design charrette at the NC State College of Design this week to create a visual solution for 14 banners that will hang on the building (similar to the rendering above).
This will be a much better solution than simply painting the building and adding landscape. The banners could end up becoming complementary to the Shimmer Wall across the street. While not permanent, the banners could give some life to this part of McDowell Street which currently sees a lot of action next door at Poole's Diner on weekends. Otherwise, the corner of Davie and McDowell which is flanked by the jail, an auto repair shop and an empty parking lot, is a bit desolate in the daytime as well as the evenings. It could use some color, but no oak leaves or trees please. We have enough of those art pieces already. The banners are expected to be implemented in May.
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Raleigh Boy
02/20 08:00 PM
That concrete parking deck always makes me think of Cold War era East Berlin—colorful banners are gonna be nice.
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Dick Fitswell
02/21 01:12 AM
oh man! lets face it, the city doest have balls to put up anything exciting and I’m tried of seeing stock photos sold as art. the thought of covering up that beautiful concrete work really breaks my heart :-(
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JeffS
02/21 01:44 AM
I would have personally contracted the work to graffiti artists.
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bartcusick
02/21 03:16 AM
I will still do it for 150k$$$.
bartcusick.carbonmade.com. -
bimpo
02/21 12:00 PM
well bart you’re going to be about 3-4x as expensive as some of the other options being discussed
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JeffS
02/21 12:17 PM
bimpo, I really don’t think the city/developer would have trouble finding donors. Original art, supporting local artists vs: stock art on vinyl.
Not that I think Raleigh has the vision to do such a thing. Anything beyond brick, asphalt, and concrete really seems to be stretching our aesthetic sensitivities. Trees are cool as long as they’re depictions. Real ones make us nervous.
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bartcusick
02/21 01:21 PM
Bimpo, My statement goes back to when an article was first posted online about how it was going to cost $350,000 to paint the whole building. I was proposing that I could paint a cool mural there for less than half that. http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/8439925/ And sure instead of painting an awesome mural and paying artists. Just cover it with temp posters. Hey it can’t be that bad. It worked for covering the holes in my room growing up.
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Susan Moore
02/21 04:48 PM
Sure looks better than the concrete…but I agree with JeffS.
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frank
02/21 06:30 PM
They should be giant portraits of characters from the Andy Griffith Show.
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Brian
02/21 10:58 PM
I would kick in to see a giant Cusick caricature of Ernest T. Bass.
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