Downtown's New Buildings

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“It’s cool,” agrees Beckley, “and the nod to history of the site is important. It’s the kind of architecture you admire, which is sometimes easier to criticize than architecture you hate. But although some say the design looks like something you might find at an auto dealership, I don’t agree.”

“It’s a real good addition to North Main,” gushes Quinn. “It’s absolutely the right scale. The planning for the floodplain, the ‘stilts,’ is excellent. And the railroad car just hits everybody who sees it right between the eyes.” Even the normally reserved Mouat is emphatic: “I like it,” he says, striking the table gently with his fist, “and the railroad car is terrific, the sort of thing that keeps things fun.”

In Rueter’s opinion, 201 Depot is “Neumann/Smith’s best building in Ann Arbor. It’s not an Ann Arbor building, but it’s functional and responds well to the site. And it embodies one of the central truths of our business: you can’t have good architecture without a good client.”

If that’s the case, what about the Ann Arbor Municipal Center, the controversial expansion of City Hall? All the architects agree that the grueling approval process shows the citizenry’s deep ambivalence about spending $47 million in a crashing national economy. But opinion on the planned building is mixed.