What I see here is what could have been acceptable vs. what it became. Still the best word I can think of is disappointing.

“Design vs. Costs” would be a better heading. Most developers are ONLY concerned with the bottom line and thus use every trick in the book to water down the original design and cut back costs.

I understand, and have learned to accept, some variation from plans. It’s not uncommon. But there is a gross variance here that should not be accepted. Shouldn’t the city have some recourse in such situations?

Even different colors would have made a difference. That was lazy architecture, pure and simple.

Wow. Can we tear this down? Please?

It should be noted that Henderson doesn’t even own this property any longer. Sold it a couple of years ago.

I think disappointment is too kind a word. I call it an eyesore. From the brick color, to the 70s palm texturing, to the hideous green awnings with white lettering, it’s just awful. I have to avert my eyes when I drive past it, honestly. I can think of three ways even doing the building on the cheap it could have been enhanced: red brick, plain tan-yellow EIFS (it hurts me to type those letters but even it would be better) and plain black awnings. When I go to other cities and see some of their multi-family housing options I wonder why we can’t have design like they do. Why do we re-select developers who seem to be cursed with bad taste and no sense of obligation?

Often the project gets value engineered by the contractor. It is his job to bring it in within the loan amount. The contractor makes sure he covers his markups and profit.
I’m not sure how you control that.

You control it by hiring the architect first who then hires the contractor to work for them and the owner. Then you do your homework and not let them substitute without credits. You have a solid estimate make sure your design is within it. Most importantly, you have to have a hands on owner, urban renewal/ city.

The real problem here was the original design sucked and value engineering made it suck worse.

It wasn’t just the contractor making decisions about materials, the entire design was reworked before construction started. One level was completely removed, many of the architectural details were eliminated, etc.

These were all major changes that should have triggered what happened at the Mercy site: the RFP process was re-opened and the revised project was considered along new proposals.

In the case of the Legacy, not only did they let the developer completely change the entire project, they allowed him to miss multiple “final” deadlines and it took more than three years to even commence.

The whole thing — including the final result — was nothing short of scandalous. I can only hope that everyone has learned from these mistakes. At the very least, lots of people will be watching this very closely.

Drawings can be misleading, and usually lack sufficient detail to communicate everything that’s entailed – which is why they’re augmented with construction specifications and detail drawings that further spell out materials & methods in greater detail.

On top of spelling out those details upfront, you still need to hire professionals to administrate and construction-manage the job, as the build unfolds to ensure adherence with the plans, AND adjust as needed in keeping with the overall design intent.

The key is having someone from the design side involved in oversight, from start to finish.

Otherwise, as we see, you can still technically deliver on the “big” plans, and fall short of expectations by “value-engineering” out important design features.

Not much can be done about Legacy now, it’s done (maybe one day, renovations will make it more suitable to it’s location in the city core).

But we don’t need another Legacy-type project. So it’s important to learn from what happened before, go in with eyes open and adjust on the MidTown project so it doesn’t happen again.

And the original Henderson design looks just like the current Brooks/Henderson design only with flat roofs. How bad is this…

i agree with everything jill said…

Left out of the discussion is the fact that the apartments and the overall layout is the best in downtown now. Having lived there for 18 months I can say that ugly is also only skin deep.

I don’t understand the problem here. The City does exactly the same thing (value engineers, doesn’t deliver what was promised, say whatever they need to to get approval). Then when we get what we get, some excuse them every which way from Sunday. Why hold developers to a different standard?

(extreme sarcasm)

Is there any city project besides the Ford Center that could even begin to compare what was done at the Legacy versus what was promised? Granted, the Bricktown Canal was shorter, but there’s no problem with quality or design of the existing. While the Ford Center was done on the cheap because we’d run out of money, at least the city made an attempt to finish it right later. Brooks and Henderson made no such effort. If they couldn’t afford to do it as planned, I’d rather they’d made it smaller than made it lesser quality.

And H2o, for most visitors and passersby, skin is all we get to see. It’s the skin that lends character or lack thereof to the area surrounding. Ugly drags down the area around it and gives other people license to continue building cheap and ugly.

The Ford and Canal are the poster children. This isn’t the time or place for that debate so I won’t go there. All I am asking is that you have some consistency with the argument. Hold everyone to the same standards (City or Developers). Since nothing has been proposed yet (changing of plans etc), it is far too early to worry or get upset about it. Have to wait until all the data is in sort of thing (wait until the buildings are built. Just because they did it before (changed designs), doesn’t mean they will do it again. Unlike public financed projects like MAPS where we are all stakeholders, the only people that should be upset about any possible bait-n-switch (for lack of a better term) are those that have pre-purchased a unit based on the proposed renderings. As long as they build something even remotely similar to what was pitched, you should give them the same pass.

I think all should be held to the same standard. They should be held accountable (no further projects approved) if they can’t be trusted to follow through on what they said they were going to do. Otherwise nearly everything can be dismissed as campaign hyperbole or a sales job.

It’s a cookie cutter look. The inside’s are nice but The Legacy is average at best.