"The alleged reason? It was frequented by Chicago mobsters in the 1930s. Seriously, folks? The building, which has no particularly interesting architectural characteristics, should be preserved because murderers used to eat there?... It’s a ridiculous argument on its face. Yet, the developer will take time and spend money to try to work it out. That will only add to the cost of the project and those costs will eventually find their way into rental payments, assuming the project gets built at all... What may be behind this is Madison’s dislike for tall buildings. The proposal would be 18 stories tall... Too often, I think, the [historic preservation] movement allows itself to be captured by people who just don’t like tall and big buildings in any form. "
Writes Dave Cieslewicz (a former mayor of Madison) in Isthmus.
What counts as a tall building where you live? What counts as too tall, such that the locals resist? What does it take to unleash bullshit about historic value?
Why do people object to tallness? I think the downtown would look better if the streets were solidly packed with tall buildings, creating urban canyons, and not just because I enjoy walking in shade.
Now, let me read Wikipedia article "High-rise Building":
In the United States, tower blocks are commonly referred to as "midrise" or "highrise apartment buildings"... Specifically, "midrise" buildings are as tall as the streets are wide, allowing 5 hours of sunlight on the street....
The government's experiments in the 1960s and 70s to use high-rise apartments as a means of providing the housing solution for the poor broadly resulted in failure. Made in the tower in the park style, all but a few high-rise housing projects in the nation's largest cities... fell victim to the "ghettofication" and are now being torn down, renovated, or replaced....
In contrast to their public housing cousins, commercially developed high-rise apartment buildings continue to flourish in cities around the country largely due to high land prices and the housing boom of the 2000s. The Upper East Side in New York City, featuring high-rise apartments, is the wealthiest urban neighborhood in the United States. Currently, the tallest residential building in the world is Central Park Tower located in Midtown Manhattan, having a height of 1,550 feet (470 m) with the highest occupied floor at 1,417 feet (432 m).
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One objection is the way towers loom over the street, blocking out the sun and creating a feeling of Soviet oppression. New York has a good solution with set backs--as the building goes up, it pulls further back from the street, creating balconies every few floors and letting plenty of light onto the street despite the tall buildings.
Ringing the downtown, 4-5 story buildings with businesses on the first floor and residential apartments on the upper floors creates the density needed for a vibrant street life while maintaining an open feeling.
I've always had a thing for the Wonder Bar. Just the name is enough; The Wonder Bar. It was a favorite watering hole of my grandfather's.
My friend had a Madison sign company a few years back and he redid the outdoor signage. I got one of their signs, maybe 4 ft by 6 ft, minus the neon. Not sure what I'll do with it. Awaiting inspiration.
An 18-story apartment building doesn't seem like an improvement to me.
I understood that former State Senator Fred Risser (D - extremely wealthy Shorewood Hills) was the primary protector of Madison’s unwritten rule against buildings taller than about 12 stories. That was to protect the view of the Capitol from around the city. Although that building is beautiful, that always struck me as excessively government-centric, even for Madison. I hoped that once he left his seat that might have eased. Evidently not. What we’re left with is an exceedingly boring, uniform skyline around the Capitol that looks like nothing more than a fortress wall. Perhaps an unintended insight into the insular progressive downtown Madison perspective on life?
Public housing was originally intended as transitional housing, or starter housing, if you prefer. The rents were low, so the renters could save for a down payment while gaining work experience and presumably an increasing income, allowing them to enter the private housing market after a few years.
The system worked as intended for 90% of the early public housing residents. Unfortunately, 10% or so of the public housing tenants were satisfied to stay there indefinitely, and there was no time limit on residency. So the 10% share grew over time, until nearly 100% of public housing residents never intended to move on. That creates a very different dynamic, which the post calls "ghettoization." It calls for a different supervisory structure.
That's the story I was told when I worked for the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Agency decades ago. NRHA had some very successful public housing projects, which were managed by its Central Maintenance Division. CMD did monthly inspections of all units. Maintenance defects were identified, with CMD handling major ones at no cost and the tenants responsible for minor ones. Anything that the tenant failed to correct in a month was fixed by CMD--and the tenant was charged for the service. Tenants were completely responsive, and CMD had little to do other than inspect.
That is, until the Brooke amendment limited the NRHA's ability to pass on the cost of repairs to delinquent tenants. That upended a system that had worked well for years. When I was there the CMD was staffing up to actually deliver services that had only been threatened--it had all been a bluff.
BTW, the waiting list for NRHA public housing was years long, and I was told the waiting list was a fiction. The only way to get a public housing apartment by then was to be a teenage girl already living in public housing who got pregnant. That put you at the top of the list on an emergency basis.
I've wandered a bit, but my point is that tall public housing buildings did not fail because they were too tall.
When I visited NYC on an almost annual basis, before the homeless and ever accumulating litter filled the sidewalks, I too enjoyed the shade of spectacular high rise buildings. I never wanted to live there. I often visited a good friend who owns the whole top floor of a magnificent high rise overlooking all of Manhatten. Each off the massive four outer walls had expansive windows and were painted in dark colors so the room would not compete with sparkling lights stretching for miles in every direction. There were also baconies with more unobsructed views but they were rarely used. The wind was frightening at that height.
The Coalition Against the Shadow managed to reduce a 20 story proposal to 15 a few years ago in Iowa City, where fewer than a dozen scattered bldgs exceed 10.
If you spend any time in Manhattan, those urban canyons get kind of old after a while unless it's a very hot day. A good mix of sun and shade can be found outside of midtown, and that's a good thing as there are fewer tourists and better restaurants.
I was surprised to learn that New Haven, CT has at least buildings over 200 ft tall, including a few over 300 ft and one with 31 floors. They're spread across the city, rather than clustered together, so even when walking next to the tallest one, I don't get the "urban canyon" feeling.
"What counts as a tall building where you live?"
In Minneapolis, about 30 stories.
"The system worked as intended for 90% of the early public housing residents. "
I can attest to that. When I was born in 1957. we lived in Washington, D.C.'s Belleview projects, long torn down. My parents both had a high school education. And their kids? My middle brother earned a BA and got rich writing code before anyone even knew what it was. My sister earned an MBA and is an rich executive with a house and sailboat on Puget Sound, My oldest brother earned a Ph.D. from UCLA followed by three years of post-doc at Columbia and is a world traveler with a home in the second wealthiest zip-code in the Bay Area. And me? I took the road less traveled, had a blast and even still, managed to retire early.
So glad we didn't make project-living our life-style.
Three stories is about as tall as they get in Antigua Guatemala, where I live. Because of earthquakes.
I grew up near Springfield Illinois. The beautiful Illinois State Capitol could be seen for miles above the endless flat expanse of corn and soybeans. There were many buildings in the 10 to 15 story range and several grand old hotels (since torn down). Then came the Hilton Hotel tower, an ugly 30 story penis that towers over everything. Hideous.
We think of old medieval cities, with their winding, hilly streets and hodge-podge of architectural styles, as romantic. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that the medieval people who had to live in these cities envisioned the perfect city as uniform buildings laid out on a square grid.
It was not the tallness of the buildings that caused the failures of public housing. In NYC it was the failure of repair and maintenance and security caused by incompetence and corruption of the management. The public housing projects where David Dinkins and Charles Rangel lived were tall and perfectly fine places to live though not available to the intended recipients.
In other areas it was that as well as by well-intentioned but badly conceived policies such as Jim Gust described above.
Your NIMBY contingent is endlessly creative when it comes to reasons for projects not to be built.
In Rolling Hills California where I grew up two stories above ground level is a forbidden high rise. One guy built a 6 story house, but 5 stories were underground - one story was a tennis court. https://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-rolling-hills-subterranean-20181108-story.html
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