Let's come back to the West Village project and take a look at the other half of Phase II -- the buildings between Main St. and Morgan St. (If you missed it, please see the previous post for thoughts on the overall site plan and the Chesterfield/Walker buildings.
First up: 700 W. Main St., the old Main Street Office building. "Non-historic additions" are being removed and the space will be returned to 8,500 sq. ft. of Class A office space on each of two floors. Each floor is for a single tenant only (no subdividing). The new structured parking deck along Morgan St. will back up close to the 700 W. Main building, with a new green space on the interior of the Fuller/Main/Duke/Morgan block.
Unfortunately, this continues a trend that exists throughout a lot of West Village and American Tobacco: Blocks that open upon themselves and provide vistas and green space at the center of a small complex rather than at the edges. Similarly, the Morgan St. garage will plop down right along the street; it's not clear if there'll be any architectural facing to make the garage look, well, like something other than a garage.
No news to publish at this point on the "Office/Research/Lab" building along Duke that comprises the remainder of the block. Until fairly recently this was actually still active laboratory space for Vector Tobacco, but I believe this will be reverting to other uses.
Next up are the Cobb and O'Brien Buildings, which together comprise the only buildings on the block bounded by Main, Fuller, Morgan, and the downtown loop. Of course, as discussed in the last post there's plenty of room to do something much more interesting with that empty parking lot, but logic presumes that's some time off in the future.
Anyway, both the Cobb and O'Brien warehouses will be mixed-use, accommodating loft-style apartments on their north side (nearest the existing apartments complex), with each having 20,000 sq. ft. of Class A office or "service retail" space on the south side, facing Main. (In the floor plan, the apartments are at left.) Interestingly, hardwood floors are being proposed for these two buildings as opposed to the flat carpeting that predominates the office space world. The asphalt between the two will be ripped up and replaced with a landscaped courtyard.
A last item of interest: not visible on yesterday's site plan rendering is something that can be seen over on a different version of the site plan printed on the leasing flyer for the Walker building: proposed "West Village condos" at the corner of Fernway and Liggett/Washington St., near Tosca's and the Power House building at West Village. With all the other condo construction planned for downtown, it's an open question as to when or if projects like this will come to fruition -- but it does hold out hope that at least one big open parking space in this part of downtown could become something other than a grandiose field of impervious material.
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