Manchester Infill & Small Developments

Really, how long is it? These apartments are going to have incredible views of downtown.
 
I'm pretty sure that Mill West was originally known as Mill No. 11, which according to Wikipedia was the largest cotton mill building in the world at the time of its construction; it's about 900 feet long by 100 feet wide.

Mill_No._11%2C_Amoskeag_Manufacturing_Company.jpg
 
It's a really beautiful building, I've been in it a bunch of times. All of the mills have been redone so well, and they're pretty much all filled up. The only one that isn't is the Pandora building and that's just because it's being renovated. Pretty much all of the business that takes place in Manch is located in the mills, aside from the Plaza and City Hall Plaza, hopefully they get filled to the max soon so the city can start building up.
 
You're right--these buildings make great spaces for offices, restaurants, bars and retail. The expansiveness, light and details make them great conversion spaces, and the mills have allowed Manchester to attract businesses to the city center that might otherwise have ended up in suburban office parks or the bland financial/office buildings that other downtowns in the region. On a side note, the warehouses south of the Verizon and similar structures are in many ways smaller versions of the same spaces of the mills just waiting to be rehabbed.

While I'm glad that there's finally going to be some residential development in the mills, I think they're a bit less suited to this: chopping up the interiors with room partitions and double-loaded corridors goes against a lot of what is inherently so great about the wide open spaces. Still, smaller mills (former shoe mills, I believe) further out along Silver and Cypress Streets show that residential conversion can be done well and attract middle-class and higher-earner tenants, which the city center doesn't do a great job of yet. I hope and assume that some commercial space will remain in the building, but given its size I think it will be in some ways more like the Wall Street Tower than the Silver Street mill apartments, for example, though obviously with much more charm than Wall Street. Personally, I think the smaller building between Mill West and the river (also to be converted to apartments) and similarly sized buildings have more potential to create something of a neighborhood. Unfortunately, most of the smaller scale mill buildings have been demolished, which is partly why I hope new mixed-use redevelopment with more walk-ups or something of the sort will be built in this area and around the city. Even if this conversion ends up being a nicer, more urban version of large-scale apartment complexes, it will be great to show how residential space can work in the Millyard and city center, and the impact of several hundred new downtown(-ish) residents will be huge.

Here's an image of the Notre-Dame neighborhood before its demolition in the 1960s (give or take):

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This is looking from the foot of Lafayette Park from the intersection of Coolidge Ave and Amory Street; the corner building faces Amory and where Main Street used to continue through, now the back of the liquor store. You can see one of the towers of Mill West in the background. It would be great to see a version of this--retail below housing and offices--rebuilt on this site, which would make the Mill West apartments even more attractive I think.
 
Portlander said:
If Manchester could stand the Brady Sullivan Millworks on it's end it would at least be the tallest building in New England if not the country. The length of that mill is crazy!
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The NYC world trade center is going to be crazy tall though.
 
FrankLloydMike said:
Just an update on the Mill West apartments, which are being developed in the giant old mill building on the West Side just south of Notre Dame Bridge:

From NHPR:



MILL%20WEST%20panarama.JPG


The image is from the NHPR website, looking at Mill West and where the Notre-Dame neighborhood used to be from downtown. It gives a good perspective of how enormous the building is (I remember when it had batting cages in it in the 1990s, among other things). You can also see the low, long, white building across the street, which now houses a Rite-Aid, state liquor store, and formerly a Vista Foods. This should be a prime redevelopment site. Along with most of CMC (to the left) and the Pariseau High-rise (beige building to the right), this shopping center sits on what was once a vibrant, dense neighborhood. Now a half-empty plaza with huge parking lots on either side of McGregor Street, it should hopefully one day see a mixed-use redevelopment to restore it to some sort of neighborhood. Hopefully the Mill West apartments will help provide the mass of people needed for something like this; surely people living in that building would rather have coffee shops and restaurants across the street than a Rite-Aid parking lot.

edit: Here's a better image of the Rite-Aid plaza, along with recent CMC buildings and expansions that create the beginnings of a strong street wall there. In the top you can see a corner of Lafayette Park, a beautiful spot n front of St. Marie's with great views of downtown that is just begging to have a dense, mixed-use neighborhood/development at its foot instead of the back of a bad, 1960s shopping mall:

pic_cmc_6.jpg
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Yeah, that plaza is bad. And you mentioned the idea of building it up and making entrances from the park behind it into shops on a second floor. This is a cool concept.
 
All plazas are bad. The ironic thing is that they get their name from great public spaces in traditional European cities.

The Notre-Dame neighborhood looked awesome.
 
Thanks for posting pics of the Notre Dame neighborhood. It's a shame that was lost, but maybe there will be an opportunity of mixed use on that site due to the demand of new residents.

As others have said, the mills are just about maxed out. I'd love to see another high rise. It's great to see more good news coming out of the city despite the recession.
 
Manch Vegas, I completely agree. I think the biggest thing that's a shame about Notre Dame (and so many neighborhoods like it elsewhere) is that at the time it was demolished it was an ill-conceived, but probably well-intentioned plan to alleviate an impoverished neighborhood. The shortsightedness though--aside from the fact that it probably did little to actually help the former residents of the neighborhood--is how well-situated this neighborhood would have been for gentrification and renewal in the past 15-20 years. Its proximity to Downtown, but its self-contained nature (separated from Downtown by the river, and hemmed in by parks and the slope of Rimmon Heights above) would have set Notre Dame up to probably be the most promising neighborhood for young professionals and families. I think it easily could have been like some of the nice, emerging neighborhoods on the edge of downtown Portland. I really hope the plaza there, and perhaps even the area around Pariseau tower and the Mill West parking lot, is redeveloped in the future. If Rimmon Heights continues to take off and the Mill West apartments do well, I think there'd be a lot of developer interest in the site.

As far as high rises, I'm indifferent. Manchester's skyline is nice as it is, and while another tower could be nice, I think infill and higher density in general is more important. I'd rather see all the single-story buildings along Elm Street replaced with even 3-4 story ones before another 20-story tower is built.

Here are a a few spots where I think some mid-rise buildings could be nice and add some density, though:
1. Parking lot (Franklin, Middle and Merrimack Streets) across from the Carpenter tower. This area, amidst the Amoskeag rowhouses a block back from Elm, is one of the nicest but most underdeveloped Downtown, in my opinion. I could see a park where the parking lot north of Middle is, and a mid-rise building with restaurants and shops facing the park and Franklin south of Middle.
2. Bedford Street lot (Spring, Canal and Commercial Streets). According to the city's Economic Development plan, this is the secondary (and now likely primary) site for a downtown intermodal transit station. While farther from Verizon and Gaslight area, an elegant parking tower with a transit station and maybe some retail on the ground floor would be both an excellent gateway to the city and would do a lot to tie the Millyard with Elm Street.
3. WMUR (Granite, Canal and Commercial Streets). Something here (with residences maybe) could bring more people to the southern edge of the Millyard, as well as give some definition to the Granite Street gateway.
4. Granite Landing (Granite and Second Streets, West Side). This was discussed here over the summer, and a video rendering of a possible project is available on the MEDO website. The City is actively soliciting a high-rise mixed use development here, which would be great for Downtown/Millyard, Granite Square and the Granite Street gateway.
5. Armory site (Canal, Elm and Amoskeag Bridge). If this area is redeveloped, I think the Armory building is probably worth saving, but there's plenty of land around it, plus the parking lot behind New Hampshire/Brady-Sullivan Tower. Between that tower and the apartment high-rise, there's a nice cluster of taller buildings here--one or two more would give the north end of Downtown some nice punctuation.

Aside from those areas and some others, I really think building up even to 3-4 stories on empty lots, single-story buildings and parking lots throughout the city center should be more of a priority. I'm curious to know what others think about that in general, and where priorities for high-rises might be.
 
On the same side of elm st. across from the verizon there is that one floor building, that should be at least 3-4 floors. And there are many similar places. I agree that those should be the priority, however if a high-rise is to go up I do not see a problem.There is going to be those other phases of the river's edge project (near elliot project) and I think there should be a significant building there. If it is a high-rise then great. Like I said in the past, a large multi-use building with a large movie theater (similar to the AMC on tremont in Boston) is needed in Manchester as the one on South Willow (small) is closed. More offices and residential are needed. Manchester has enough restaurants and shops for now IMO.

Some of those parking lots kill me. They say parking is a problem. I could see those being parking garages possibly with offices on top or something. Gotta be creative.

Parks as well, they are limited and although they are nice, non of them are super attractive. There has to be some really nice and fairly large one set up like you said with some more nice shops and stuff.

The granite's landing proposal IMO is both attractive and a good concept.

But I could see another "City hall Plaza Tower" going up on top of some of those older 1 story Down Town buildings and I wouldn't mind.
 
I completely agree that these one story buildings need to get filled in with more in the 3-4 floor range. I'm just greedy and I want a highrise too. Southern Elm hopefully will be transformed from the ugly gas stations and used car dealers to a real community. I'm still not happy about Market Basket, but maybe it will help. The Elliott's first phase is better than I thought and I can't wait to see the rest.

I love the movie theater idea. What the city needs downtown is more than just new bars and restaurants. I'd love it if they put in a Lucky Strike Lanes somewhere too.

The space across from the Carpenter Center is the perfect spot for development. I've always loved that area.

I think all of our ideas will happen eventually. Just think of how run-down the millyard used to be.
 
I don't think it's greedy--there are definitely spots in the city that would be great places for high-rise development, whether that's another 20+ story tower or even something more like 10-12 stories. My only concern with adding another 20 story tower, for instance, is that it would represent so much new space that a lot of the demand for building up or replacing low-rise buildings would be satisfied.

The Market Basket is a disappointment (I still think adding a few stories to the old Hampshire Plaza mall with a Trader Joes or something on the first floor would have been great), but I hope the Rivers Edge project will generate enough traffic between there and Downtown to overcome the loss at that Market Basket site. If that area takes off (hopefully retaining and restoring many of the old warehouse buildings and filling in the auto places and empty lots), I still think Market Basket could be convinced to develop the Elm Street frontage of that site in the future. Who knows?

I think what I really love about that Carpenter Center area--besides the beautiful rowhouses and other buildings there--is that it's one of the few areas Downtown that you can sort of stumble upon. I've read about how the Millyard used to have all these quiet, hidden spaces along the canals and between buildings, but most of Downtown Manchester is pretty predictable even when it's nice. The Victory Park area and Hanover Street are nice and a bit secluded, but Franklin Street is really the only place I can think of where you're suddenly in a very different (and pleasant) area than Elm Street. If a few more (probably upscale) restaurants, bars and shops could be added in the buildings there and some new development, it would be a really neat spot.

I also think a movie theatre, bowling alley or anything else like that (entertainment other than dining) would be great either Downtown or possibly as an anchor down at Rivers Edge alternatively. While there are a lot of restaurants and bars downtown, I'm actually not satisfied with the retail element. Too many of the stores downtown are specialty shops; there's really no general retail. I remember the Hippo used to talk about trying to get an Urban Outfitters downtown as a sort of retail anchor. It wouldn't be my first choice, but getting a department store or anchor-type retail, or a bookstore like that would be good, I think.

On a completely different note that I just thought of talking about restaurants: I think Manchester could use a couple "restaurant row" type places in various neighborhoods throughout the city. I was visiting Hartford over Christmas, and for all its ills it has quite a few burgeoning neighborhoods on the outskirts with a row or two of nice, neighborhood restaurants and bars. In addition to things like a hardware store, convenience store and the like, a collection of restaurants, bars and coffee shops really goes a long way in making a neighborhood desirable and livable. I could see somewhere along Somerville Street (Wilson to Taylor St), Webster Street, eventually in the Hollow (Hall, Massabesic St & Lake Ave), and a couple areas on the West Side. Making neighborhoods like these more attractive will not only make them nicer, but go a long way to continue to improve Downtown.
 
Agree with everything.

Less restaurants and bars downtown.

More entertainment downtown.

More regular retail downtown.

And some restaurants elsewhere in the city.
 
I looked at Franklin St on google maps, yeah, that street is very nice, the carpenter building is nice. But the fairpoint building is crap. That could become a high rise.

Also, too many parking lots! Those should become retail and restaurants and parks.

Then build a parking garage that will ultimately take up less foot print but allow for more parking in the end. Franklin is so nice but offers nothing.
 
You're right about the Fairpoint building. It's one of those buildings that I almost forget about it--not completely offensive, just incredibly bland. It's on prime real estate, too. At the very least, that building should be re-faced and maybe add some retail to the ground floor to give it a street presence. A high-rise there would be great though--it would work well to create more of an enclosed space in Stanton Plaza, the open space in front of the Center of NH, and fill in nicely between the hotel and Carpenter towers. If Franklin Street is ever developed more, the Fairpoint building is the only one that would face Franklin, Elm, and Veterans Park/Stanton Plaza.

The 2nd and 3rd floors of City Hall Plaza are parking levels, and something similar could be done with a level at any mid- to high-rise on Franklin Street as well as any new building to replace Fairpoint. A better transit system, of course, would alleviate some of the need for parking there, too.

I believe the Carpenter, formerly a hotel, is all elderly housing now. The ground floor, especially the one-story wings, would make for some great upscale restaurant/bar locations, though.

Aside from Franklin Street having the potential to be a unique area within downtown, it would also be one of the few areas to draw people off Elm Street in the direction of the Millyard and river. More activity has been happening on side streets east of Elm--Hanover, Amherst, Concord, Lowell and potentially Manchester soon--and with the library, courthouse, NHIA, and further off Currier all over there, people are drawn to that side. There's very little activity on the side streets west of Elm, even though there's a planning priority to better tie Elm and the Millyard together.
 
I just saw this video about Manchester on NHPTV: "Manchester and the Amoskeag." I'm not sure of the date, but given the images and that the narrator mentions only the Upper Canal having been filled in, I'd guess sometime in the 1970s, but it could be a bit later. It gives a nice overview of the history of the city, and on a bit of a sad note, a glimpse at how much of the fabric of the city has been lost along the river. On a much more optimistic note, it's impressive to see how derelict and deteriorating Manchester was just a few decades ago compared to the renewal and revitalization today.
 
Yeah canal use to be a canal.

And yes, although we say they could do better, in reality, they are doing better than most cities in terms of revitalizing the city as a whole.

The more we talk about Franklin, the more I wonder why it has not already been done. You say restaurants at the carpenter building, this is true, however the building looks great the way it is and there does have to be some elderly housing. And yes, it is currently elderly housing.

I didn't know the 2nd and 3rd floor are parking without the 1st being? How is this done. If this is true then yes, this can be done on those parking lots. I just hate to see a city with parking problems develop a parking lot into a building without any thought into incorporating a parking garage.

And yeah, although I agree the fairpoint is neutral, being where it is, it has a ton of potential and kinda just sits there.


I just looked on google maps at the city hall plaza, what building has the 2nd and 3rd floor parking? I do not see it.
 
It really is amazing to see just how far Manchester has come in the last 30 years. Of course there are still many things I'd like to see chance, and always sit here thinking that nothing will ever get going, but looking at the condition of the city in the 70s really puts Manchester's rebirth has had. Downtown really wasn't that great until the mid 90s either.

As for the Carpenter building, ya there does have to be some elderly housing, but its hard to sit there and see it in a building like that. There are plenty of nursing homes on the outskirts, and I'm sure with the right deal, whoever runs Carpenter would move into another facility. If Manch did it right it could be the city's version of the Biltmore in Providence. If you look at old pictures the building used to have almost the same exact red neon sign the Biltmore has, only it said Carpenter obviously.
 
Monopoly, the parking garage is accessible from Market Street where it ends at the small pedestrian plaza in front of City Hall. It's hard to see from Google, but there's a ramp that leads up inside the building in the back there. I believe there are at least two, possible three levels of parking in the building, all within the grey/pink granite at the base. If you look closely, you can see the all the windows on those levels are actually screens because of the parking. Obviously the ramp takes up space that could be retail in other buildings, but City Hall Plaza actually has a pretty small footprint and the ramp in a larger footprint would be more negligible. That said, I think the small footprint is one of City Hall Plaza's strengths--as well as being a pretty attractive and humanly scaled project in general--but the small footprint is a lot different than the failed superblock created for Hampshire Plaza.

Also, I just noticed that the cornice at the top of the granite before City Hall Plaza turns to brick does not wrap around the back. Given that all the other detailing continues around the building, I doubt this was done for cost savings. I bet the intention is either a future 3-4 story (up to or just above the level of granite) wing or adjacent building on the corner of Market and Franklin Streets. That would definitely be a nice extension of the building there--possibly more parking or offices on the upper levels and retail at the ground level, if Franklin Street is ever developed.

I wouldn't really change anything about the exterior of the Carpenter, and actually thinking having senior housing downtown, or at least in dense, walkable neighborhoods is a good thing. Seniors living on the edge of town are isolated, and that's not in their best interest or the city's. I'm not sure if the Carpenter is the best place for senior housing downtown, but if it is ever converted to something else, I think senior housing should be replaced (and added given the increasing number of seniors) downtown. Still, I think especially in the wings of the ground floor, it might be good to see some restaurant or even retail space. What is the Biltmore used as now?

More parking lots, especially ones owned by the city, should be developed, and not just as parking garages. New development should encourage (and maybe it does) subsurface or upper level parking. The city should also look into something done (or being considered) in Portland: allowing developers to contribute to public transit funding in lieu of parking.

Another thing I've been noticing in looking at Franklin Street and that whole area of downtown is how much of an impact good tree cover has on the feeling of a street. I'm sure this is in the plans, but the city should actively plant and maintain new street trees in places like Downtown South/Gaslight/Warehouse/whatever they want to call Elm south of Granite Street, Kelley Street and many city center neighborhoods. It will take a lot of time to rehab all the buildings that have seen better days in these neighborhoods, but good tree cover will go a long way in beautifying, building pride, and thus spurring more investment in these areas.
 
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