Downtown's New Buildings

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After seeing renderings, Beckley softens his opinions on Zaragon Place and 4 Eleven: “They are better than the average apartment complex built in Ann Arbor. Why? They have articulated facades that break their bulk up, they have identifiable front doors, and they respect the street edge. The renderings of 4 Eleven especially show the building in its context—suggesting the architect didn’t just pull this project from a drawer and paste it onto an Ann Arbor street.”

Measured Mike Quinn considers 4 Eleven Lofts “to be one of the more successful urban design responses to a twenty-first-century Ann Arbor. The ten-story height of the structure definitely challenges the scale and sense of the surrounding urban streetscape, and in a perfect world, seven or eight stories would be preferable. I appreciate the use of brick and the change of materials to break up the sense of massing and reduce the sense of scale to be a better neighbor to surrounding structures.”

What about the most recent, the biggest, and the most controversial student rental project—601 Forest? The high-rise at Forest and South U aroused fear and loathing as it wound its way toward approval by the city, dwindling in the process from twenty-five to fourteen floors. It turns out the architects have mixed views on the two versions—but are united in their distaste for the building kitty-corner across the street, the eighteen-story University Towers.