Downtown's New Buildings

continued

The architects are divided on the smallest of the three: Loft 322, the five-story building with the galvanized steel facade on Liberty between Fifth Avenue and Division. Many like it. Some don’t. But however they feel about the rest of the building, all the architects hate the main floor.

“That giant garage door is absolutely hideous,” says Luckenbach, summing up the common view. “It gives that building the worst relationship to the sidewalk of any building built in Ann Arbor in the last ten years.”

Quinn concedes that “the on-site parking next to the sidewalk is unfortunate.” But otherwise he defends Loft 322. “The scale is really good,” he says. “The facade reads well from the street, and I like its honest contemporary character.”

Rueter, too, defends the building: “From a planning point of view, the call for downtown living is a good idea in general. And though I’d hate to see all of downtown look like that, one or two buildings here and there are okay.”