Manchester Infill & Small Developments

Thanks, ya there are way too many parking lots downtown, the plus with that though is there's plenty of space to develop. Was in Providence on Saturday, and was so jealous of their downtown lol. Something like a Providence Place would totally reinvent downtown.
 
Here are some more from later that afternoon. They're of the Currier Museum of Art, a few from the view of downtown at Derryfield Park, and then Stark Park (with the horse statue) which is just outside of downtown in the North End.

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The odd thing about Manchester is that it is such a city and such a town. It looks like a big little town with a huge skyline. If that makes sense. It looks like a large center city moved into a small town. The surroundings are all so suburban but the downtown is huge heightwise compared to everything around it. In a sense this is good because it preserves open space, but then it seems like the open space is being used inefficiently. don't mean to crap on manch, just bringing these things up from a criticism standpoint because all cities should be criticized, most of the time.
 
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Yah I know what you mean about the town-city thing, I think it?s because Manchester, compared to other New England cities, Portland, New Haven, Hartford, Providence, etc, is much larger in area than those places. Manchester is 33sq miles while those places are about 20sq miles or below. When I say this I?m speaking about land area, not including water, because I know Portland is like 50sq miles land and water, but land is only like 20sq miles. This makes parts of the city dense, and others suburban. So Manchester can sometimes be very deceiving, like if your driving either north or south on route 293, which goes right through downtown, Manch probably seems bigger than it is, but other areas seem like a small town. It makes the city very diverse I think.
 
I'm not familiar with the State of NH's land use laws, but I wonder if Manchester wouldn't benefit from an urban growth boundary. Essentially the idea is to mark off an area beyond which urban style development is absolutely prohibited. This does two things. One, it maintains wilderness and scenic farmland the way it is, rather than having it gobbled up by large auto dependent businesses seeking cheaper land prices farther from the city, and two, it condenses the city and artificially makes land prices more expensive. this would do a lot to gentrify manchester, because only those who could afford it would be able or willing to build or locate in the city (assuming there was a bidding war, which there may or may not be, but either way the growth boundary wouldn't act as an economically depressing agent), and the buildings that chose for convenience's sake to stay near the population center would have to build in smaller spaces, meaning height and density would increase. right now, business has its choice between manchester, Nashua, concord, and surrounding areas (I think you mentioned the imax in nearby town) as do people choosing where to live. If there was an urban growth boundary, however, nashua and concord would remain the way they are (assuming it was drawn around manchester only) and manchester would suck up all of the new investments. Or, a boundary could be drawn around each city in the state, so that the interstitial areas are not sprawled across (which is the way things currently operate). This method has been used in places like Colorado and Portland, Oregon, as well as in San Fran and London. Portland, Maine looks like it has a bigger (although not taller) skyline than manchester because if you look at a map it has a natural growth boundary. The downtown is located on a peninsula, meaning on three sides it is blocked off by water, so there is naturally not a lot of space to spread out (the peninsula I might add is only about two square miles). The rest of Portland is suburban, but downtown is very compact, for the most part (although it too has its problems of surface parking and underutilized areas) because business wishing to locate here has no choice but to build up or not build at all. Perhaps you could write your representative and ask about State land use laws. The urban growth boundary concept is controversial to some, but in my opinion it seems to work well. Essentially it says make a choice: urban or rural, none of this in between crap (i.e. sprawl). what do you think?
 
I love those pictures of Manchester! Manchester is great city, although I wish the downtown was a little bit bigger, like Portland's. I could say the same thing about Portland though, I wish it was more like Manchester (in terms of height).
 
in terms of size and regional importance I think the two cities are very similar, even if culturally distinct. Manchester is taller, but portland is wider (at least in their downtowns) so it is a trade off I guess. Both cities would benefit from taking advantage of the successes of the other.
 
Patrick said:
I'm not familiar with the State of NH's land use laws, but I wonder if Manchester wouldn't benefit from an urban growth boundary. Essentially the idea is to mark off an area beyond which urban style development is absolutely prohibited. This does two things. One, it maintains wilderness and scenic farmland the way it is, rather than having it gobbled up by large auto dependent businesses seeking cheaper land prices farther from the city, and two, it condenses the city and artificially makes land prices more expensive. this would do a lot to gentrify manchester, because only those who could afford it would be able or willing to build or locate in the city (assuming there was a bidding war, which there may or may not be, but either way the growth boundary wouldn't act as an economically depressing agent), and the buildings that chose for convenience's sake to stay near the population center would have to build in smaller spaces, meaning height and density would increase. right now, business has its choice between manchester, Nashua, concord, and surrounding areas (I think you mentioned the imax in nearby town) as do people choosing where to live. If there was an urban growth boundary, however, nashua and concord would remain the way they are (assuming it was drawn around manchester only) and manchester would suck up all of the new investments. Or, a boundary could be drawn around each city in the state, so that the interstitial areas are not sprawled across (which is the way things currently operate). This method has been used in places like Colorado and Portland, Oregon, as well as in San Fran and London. Portland, Maine looks like it has a bigger (although not taller) skyline than manchester because if you look at a map it has a natural growth boundary. The downtown is located on a peninsula, meaning on three sides it is blocked off by water, so there is naturally not a lot of space to spread out (the peninsula I might add is only about two square miles). The rest of Portland is suburban, but downtown is very compact, for the most part (although it too has its problems of surface parking and underutilized areas) because business wishing to locate here has no choice but to build up or not build at all. Perhaps you could write your representative and ask about State land use laws. The urban growth boundary concept is controversial to some, but in my opinion it seems to work well. Essentially it says make a choice: urban or rural, none of this in between crap (i.e. sprawl). what do you think?
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I think that's a wonderful idea, it would really establish downtown as the center of Manchester if something like that was done. Right now it's as if the downtown, and S. Willow St, the strip that's full of car dealers, chain restaurants, the mall, and Walmart, are competing. There are so many efforts to put Manchester into that small destination city category, with things like the weekly alternative newspapers, The Hippo, and Manchester Express, this new magazine call "Manchester Magazine", and a bunch of websites such as EverythingManchVegas.com, and Manch-Vegas.com, that try and spread the word about new places to go and such around town. If something like this growth boundary was done, it would help establish neighborhoods too. I know like in 06 they had this big plan call Neighborhood Initiatives, where the planning board, and urban engineers did this thing where they cut the city into like 20 different neighborhoods. Most of them were a little rediculus because they were based off of things that had nothing to do with the area. Only one of them was finished on the west side, called Rimmon Heights. The city said the area was called that in the early 20th century, but there were articles that looked into and there was nothing proving it, and this was the case for most of the districts they had designed so the plan fell through when Guinta was elected. What they did though was nice, even though it was a little much with the Rimmon name, the whole area was freshly paved, new sidewalks, the old gas light street lights, the telephone poles were cleaned up, banners displaying the name of the neighborhood, and two big steel arches displaying Rimmon Heights over what they considered the entrances to the place. Manchester really only has a few distinct areas, the north end, west side, south end, and east side, the center of the city isn't really refered to as anything, just the place you don't want to be past 10, so if they wanted to do something like this they needed to consider those areas. But if development was sectioned off in some sort of ripple effect, high develepment downtown-suburban edges, the city would be nice. Manchester has a great mix of city feelings, and then drive 4 miles away and your on a huge lake front at the edge of town to go boating at, or can go skiing at the city ski area near the edge of town, etc. I just can't stand how it takes so long to get anything down, especially in Manchester.
 
In vermont they have some sort of an act that is to protect downtowns that works really well. in the greater burlington area for instance there was a law that stopped big box development in a nearby suburb and the downtown of burlington is really nice for only 50,000 people.

winooski next door to burlington has REALLY redeveloped itself too and is only a city of 6,000 with a very dense downtown. growth boundaries are very useful. perhaps you should look into them some more.

http://www.winooskifalls.com/
 
Ya that seems really interesting, for such a small place to be so well developed, they must have really had their stuff together to get that done. To me it seems a lot of the time smaller areas are able to keep themselves up better. I've always wondered if the city treated each of the 12 wards as if it were a small town, if they may be able to give each area more character.
 
small indeed. Winooski is only one square mile in size, with a population of 6,000. But, it is right nextdoor to Burlington. The city was a former mill town, just like manchester, until they redeveloped it all a few years ago.

Interesting what you said about Manchester's different wards. have you heard of the shrinking cities movement? It tries to tackle the problems of places like flint and detroit and buffalo. For detroit there is even a proposal to split the city up into several different smaller towns ringing an urban core with green space in between them (to basically clear out all of the abandoned houses and stores etc). Manchester may be growing, but I think the central city suffers from many of the same ailments as the other so called shrinking cities. google it I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
 
That is interesting, sometimes it seems there is just too much land for one Mayor or board of alderman to take care of. It always drives me crazy when they rank cities by their population, and a place like Phoenix, which is 517sq miles, is ranked the 5th largest in the country, and Boston, at 40sq miles or so is all the way up at 22, even though if you place the coverage of Phoenix over Boston, there would be at least the same amount of people if not more. I would never want Manchester to be split up, and make like a South Manchester or East Manchester, I don't think they're anywhere near that point. For instance there may be 10,000 people living in a ward, why couldn't it be treated somewhat like a town of its own within the city. Plenty of places have neighborhood commitees, like in Providence for example with places like College Hill or Federal Hill, who's whole purpose is to deal with the area aesthetically. Why couldn't you treat a ward in this way. Even if you didn't do it this way, the Urban Boundaries you had spoken about before could create this by zoning the city highest to lowest density starting with the downtown. Cutting up a city like Detroit would be suitable, because that city, and others need to be SAVED from themselves, before they're a former city of 1.5 million, with 100k living there. Manchester isn't divided up enough, it needs some concrete boundaries between neighborhoods. Because right now, whenever they create new development plans, it's always random where they begin and end.

http://www.yourmanchesternh.com/plans-and-projects/

This website is a list of all the major developments going on right now. At the very bottom, the Hilliar Downtown Studies is interesting, espescially section 5, which is a long powerpoint on what could, and should be done to develop the downtown. This though was all put together in 06, the same year that the boom ended. So I'm not sure how much of it is still being considered if not just totally forgotten about.
 
I can't think of the name of those new apartments on the corner of Elm and some other street right sort of where the downtown begins, but they are about 4 years old and about 8 stories tall. they were supposed to be two 21 story towers originally until the designs were changed. Manchester should build up as soon as the recession is done.
 
Those are the Residences at Manchester Place, I've seen that plan around a bit, but I think it was nixed pretty early one, because there wasn't enough demand for TWO 21 floor apartment buildings. They actually had a hard time filling that place at first, now I think they're mostly rented. I heard somewhere, I'm not sure whether or not it's true, but that Manch has a 300ft height limit because the flight path for one of the runways goes right over downtown. The only thing about building up right away is that I don't think downtown is dense enough for it to look proportional for it yet. like when you look at Portland, and its very densely built, Manch's downtown is either decent height, or 1 or 2 stories. I've always thought that if there was a lot of demand to build downtown they should put up a bunch of buildings that are say 150-200 feet high at first. This would make downtown much bigger feeling, like a Hartford or Providence, and the city could leave certain strategic lots that are right at the center of downtown empty for whn the time comes to build either right up to the same height as the two office towers there are now, or above those. The Hampshire Plaza (black tower) is 250ft tall, and City Hall Plaza (Red-Tan-Green roof) is 275. If they randomly built something that was like 350 or 400 feet it would look weird. Like if you've ever seen pics of Albany's downtown, there's this one building that is 589 ft tall, almost twice the height of anything else in the city, and it just looks terrible I think. I like a skyline that comes to some sort of pinnacle, like Los Angeles, or even Providence.
 
you could build a 21 story residential building at about 250 feet or less. Usually, for residential buildings there are ten feet for each level. With office buildings there tends to be more of a space because of the need for industrial vents etc.

300 feet would NOT be a bad height limit. like you said, if the town build up more, with one tower at 300 feet, this would NOT be bad at all. By built up I guess I mean built up in a quantity sense, not a height sense. even a bunch of 10 story buildings at 90 feet would look great. Manchester is also just a street, so in a sense it is like a major city trying to squeeze onto Main Street USA. It should try to branch out in different directions. Of course, though, we talk about this stuff as if its sim city and someone can just do it. But there are, I'm sure, plenty of vested interests in the area who like things just the way they are.
 
I never knew that Manchester Place was going to be two 21 story towers. I'm very glad that they at least built something there. That lot was empty for years and really interrupted the flow of downtown at that corner. I've never heard of height restrictions due to the airport.

Thanks for posting the yourmanchester link. There's some great ideas in there, especially improving Canal Street. That street is just an ugly barrier between downtown and the Millyard.
 
Ya, I'm not sure if that building height limit is true, it wouldn't be a bad thing if it was, 300ft is decent, especially if there were like say 2 or 3 buildings of that height. Ya that site is great, I found it looking for those neighborhood initiative plans, and stumbled on all that. Most of it is a good 3 or so years old, so I don't know how much of it is still being considered. Once Guinta came in, it was like he killed all the good ideas, Baines was really a visionary for the city, he saw what it could become I think. I mean in the 6 years he was mayor elm st came back, the arena, ballpark, and the residences went up, and then in 06 it was like boom it's all over. Yes Patrick, if only it was like sim city, I spent many hours when I was younger playing that game, and if I could do that to Manch, it would be a dream.
 
I tried looking for height limitations on the city site and could only notice a 100 foot restriction on certain areas, which we know isn't the max. The height limit in Portland is 190 feet, only along certain stretches of Congress street. There is an exception of about 50 more feet tall if the building tapers back at the top and if the developer meets certain requirements. This would only allow about a twenty story building, which would work fine in Portland. But, zoning variances are made all of the time, so zoning restrictions are more of a guide than a definitive restriction on building height. The newest high rise in Portland is 135 feet tall (10 stories) and it is built in an area zoned for like 50 feet. the city, realizing it wanted the building, just changed things so it could be built. Things like that are done all the time. Right now a developer wants to build a 30 story building in Portland on a site that is zoned for only 150 feet next to city hall. Well, actually I don't know if he still wants to, but he did at one time.

edit, if you're interested, see the link at the bottom of all my posts.
 
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