Manchester Infill & Small Developments

I'm sure they could break the limit if they wanted too, atleast in certain ares. Some planes do fly pretty low over downtown, so I don't know if they were going to build up, if they'd have to push further away from downtown. The river I'm pretty sure is the flight path guide, or w/e. So whatever is built would prob be further east than closer to the Merrimack. If there were to be a height limit in any part of the city, I think it should be on the West Side, St Marie's church dominates the area, and you can see it from any part of downtown or the West Side. If something were built above it or close, it would be very awkward I think. Are they still planning on the 30 story building in Portland? I do admit, that I would be disappointed if Manch lost it's tallest north of Boston title.
 
"They" is actually a "he." and the "he" in this case is very controversial. Not too many people take him seriously. In 1999, for example, he proposed to build TWO 41 story hotel towers on top of a 64,000 seat arena (almost 7 times the manchester arena's capacity) which could essentially hold the entire city population of portland inside at the same time, which would also be connected to an airline hanger, plastic surgery hospital, and cable cars connecting it over the harbor to downtown Portland. Everyone laughed at it, but he seemed pretty serious. He still owns the land and has since tried to scale down his project to 20 stories, 15 stories, 11 stories etc. Nothing has been built. Now he plans on building 30 stories in portland, which is more realistic, but people are still very cautious about proceeding with a guy like this. He has tons of money and is from new york, but he is not taken seriously around here. I haven't heard any word on the building since last summer. I don't think for the time being there is going to be much headway made on this project. I think manchester would develop just fine with a bunch of mid rise buildings and dense, compact street level retail and other uses.

Here are the renderings from Mr. Cacoulidis's (that's the portland developer's name) plans for south portland
note downtown portland in the background and the airplane entering the building's garage area (I don't mean to steal this thread from Manchester)
north.jpg

south.jpg

tower.jpg
 
Wow, what he started out with was a little much I think. I guess two hotel towers could of been feasible because Portland does get a lot of tourists with cruises and such, but an arena that large, for what I can't imagine. Gillette holds somewhere in the ballpark as well and that's for the Patriots, I can't imagine what it would be used for up in Maine, or anywhere in Northern New England for that matter. The designs, I'm not sure how you feel about them, but in my opinion are quite ugly. It's nice to mix modern with an old city, but not when it looks like that. Is this building going to be just straight office space if it's built, or mix use? Portland has the upper hand on tourists definitely, I'm sure people don't think of coming up to Manch for the weekend, but obviously Portland does. Manchester if, and when it grows, will no doubt be from business rather than pleasure, much like Providences growth has been. It's slow moving here now, but things are changing. Elm st is being completely redone the whole length of it now by putting diagonal parking all the way up and down, and new like flower bed things in the road. It just started randomly last week, had heard nothing of it before then. There redeveloping the whole front area of the street infront of this large warehouse on elm almost across from the arena, that's where they want the train station to go. Since June they've been trying to get this walkable neighborhoods thing going so little changes like this are the extent of whats developing right now. It's too much of an age of the population thing right now, a large portion of Manch is elderly, and also a large part of it is younger like 20s and 30s. So all these new restaurants pop up around downtown for the younger people, then something like the tax cap is approved by the other end.
 
yeah the design was weird. the developer wanted to use the arena to host national political conventions like democrative and repub national conventions.

The building he is talking about now is going to be mostly office, with an attempt to lure a big insurance company from Boston, but will also have some mixed use in that he intends to include parking, a hotel, a pharmacy, and street level retail. This project is proposed in a site that would currently not allow it due to height restrictions and so it probably will NOT be built without first substantially being scaled down. There are seven floors of parking included in the initial talks, and I bet if the city relaxed mandatory parking requirements it could make the building on 23 stories, much closer to what would be allowed by current zoning.
 
Huh, I suppose you're lucky that someones so interested in starting development in Portland, too bad that hasn't come along for Manch yet.
 
to tell you the truth I'm not so sure that he is serious about the development. I think he may want to build a ten to fifteen story building there, assuming the market would even allow it (not now) but I think he may say the 30 story thing just to raise eyebrows. I mean, he hasn't developed anything yet in ten years, he just keeps floating these mega projects that piss people off (but that excite urban enthusiasts). There was a similar project, bigger if you can believe it, proposed for the site next door about 20 years ago. The site is now a parking lot, but the project was approved. It would have consisted of four large office buildings connected in the middle with a parking garage. Then in 2005 there was a proposal to build a 17 story building and 10,000 seat arena, which would have helped compete with manchester, but no financing was available through taxes. Then, another site across the street has had a 15 story building proposed on it. nothing. 15+17+30+22+15+12+9 = 120 floors of commercial space has been proposed in about those two blocks in the last two decades and none of it has even come close to being built. so don't feel too bad. Manchester beats portland in size, population, and height.
 
Those are some pretty cool pics above! Does anyone have any pics of past Manchester progects that never quite made it to reality? We harp about them all the time in the Portland forums, but I never see any past proposals in the Manchester one...
 
I once saw some rendering of what the arena may have ended up looking like, the only difference was that I guess they wanted to put a parking garage next to it where the parking lot is not for the event vehicles. Other than that, I've never seen anything in terms of what buildings could have looked like. This link goes to the city site that shows a lot about what is going on right now.

http://www.yourmanchesternh.com/plans-and-projects/
 
Checked the link...I wasn't too impressed with what was in the pipeline. Hopefully in the next economic boom Manchester can beef up it's downtown and fill in those gaps inbetween it's current highrises. The area definetly has potential. Hopefully Nashua gets the itch too for building up (not in the suburbs either!).
 
I'm not sure if you went through it, but the bottom one, the hiller downtown studies, section 5 is this wicked long powerpoint about what could be good for the city to do, and it's pretty interesting. I'm not sure how much of it was actually in consideration, or was just a thought. Oh god Nashua, not a fan, if they ever surpassed Manchester I would die lol, which considering they're only 20,000 shy of our 110,000, it's plausible. Manch's downtown is extremely more developed though than Nashua's. Nashua's looks more like Concords main street more than anything.
 
Correct me if I am wrong about the name of the river, but during the last boom Nashua had plans for condominium development similar in scale to (actually even bigger than) Portland's along the Merimack. There were supposed to be about 500 or so in mid rise structures that actually looked quite nice. and very urban. Nashua's Main street is alright but not urban. Even though the population's are similar it indicates nothing as to the urbanity or work/commute patterns of the place. If anywhere in NH is a mjor bedroom for Boston, its Nashua.

Edit - Actually I just searched for the project and I located a picture of it. See below.

Riverwalk2.jpg

Aerial view of the planned mixed-use development along Franklin and Front streets in Nashua (Courtesy City of Nashua)

Minkarah Cotton: That’s the cotton storage building. That is going to go and we’re going to see the Cotton Mill Square, three new buildings along the river there. 162 units in cotton mill square and another about 360 in the Harper project. Huge, huge change.

All these changes are scheduled to begin next year.

But they are not taking place in a vacuum.

They are part of the city's master plan to broaden downtown’s appeal.

At its heart is a mile and a half boardwalk loop along the river.

full story: http://www.nhpr.org/node/11953
 
Ya that was a few years ago that Nashua wanted to do that, it never went through of course. I think that was going to be like the biggest building project in that city since they built their mall. Nashua is of coarse a bedroom community, and is in no way near what Manchester has in terms of a downtown, or even business, but if their population surpassed Manchester it would very much annoy me, bedroom or not. I'm only in Manchester every couple of weeks when I come home from school, and over the past month or so it seems that a lot has actually been going on. There reconfiguring a lot of the roads in downtown for new parking, and mostly all of them are being paved, it's a good change. Just simple stuff like new tar can make a everything on a street look ten times better. No one has really proposed any large projects in Manch in probably 5 years, because all those places like the arena, ballpark, and new apartments had been on the table for years prior to them actually going up. Once you go south of Lake Ave, downtown just dies, and becomes a strip of gas stations and tire places. Everything north of it is pretty good. Even the stretch between Bridge St and Brook st isn't as bad as it once was, a lot of the building there have been renovated lately, and I see a lot more street front business moving in.
 
Don't worry about Nashua's population. Portsmouth has about 20,000 people and its one of the best cities in New England. So is Burlington, VT, with only 38,000 (although there are several thousand additional residents during the school year in both towns).

Manchester should really try to concentrate not just on its CBD but also on its tourist activities. I for one would like to see the lego millyard at the museum sometime. Walking along the river would be nice. Is there a river walk? How about scraping the graffiti off of the mills that face the river. make sure they are no longer an eyesore. zone out suburban development like tire sales places. like you said, also, upkeep streets nicely. I know one thing Portland has been doing left and right, and which is also sweeping the country, is putting in bike lanes everywhere to encourage pedestrians to get out in alternative transportation forms. see streetfilms.org if you're interested. Increased lighting downtown would be useful too. and try to balance elm street, it seems like one side is twice as tall as the other.

I wouldn't worry at all about nashua's population because more people there means more of a market for manchester to draw on as well.
 
Muns1990 said:
Ya that was a few years ago that Nashua wanted to do that, it never went through of course. I think that was going to be like the biggest building project in that city since they built their mall. Nashua is of coarse a bedroom community, and is in no way near what Manchester has in terms of a downtown, or even business, but if their population surpassed Manchester it would very much annoy me, bedroom or not. I'm only in Manchester every couple of weeks when I come home from school, and over the past month or so it seems that a lot has actually been going on. There reconfiguring a lot of the roads in downtown for new parking, and mostly all of them are being paved, it's a good change. Just simple stuff like new tar can make a everything on a street look ten times better. No one has really proposed any large projects in Manch in probably 5 years, because all those places like the arena, ballpark, and new apartments had been on the table for years prior to them actually going up. Once you go south of Lake Ave, downtown just dies, and becomes a strip of gas stations and tire places. Everything north of it is pretty good. Even the stretch between Bridge St and Brook st isn't as bad as it once was, a lot of the building there have been renovated lately, and I see a lot more street front business moving in.
Click to expand...

I dont think that will ever happen. Hasn't Nashua's population been stagnent for a while? Also its gotta take a lot for Nashua to just jump up 20k residents to pass Manch. Also If you look at a map, Nashua is just not set up to hold as much as Manch does. Even if it does, pass Manch which is highly unlikely its not that big of a deal.

I think Manch needs to focus on keeping its clean image. The recent murders and gang activity is going to tarnish Manch's livable image. Its sortof turning into the ghetto north of the border. Nashua is also having that same problem.
 
Ya their pop hasn't changed much in a while, but really the only reason Manch's has increased over the past 10 years is because of all the immigration. Nashua probably wouldn't surpass Manchester, but anything's possible, it mostly grows because of Mass. I know that my parents have said that in the 60s and 70s Nashua was expected to be larger than Manch by the turn of the century. Manchester does have to focus on a better image. If it's not careful it's going to get the stigma of another Lowell or something like that, even Nashua has to watch it. Even people who live in NH think Manch is trashy, and it's totally not, granted it has its areas but every city does.
 
Did they ever finish that beltway around Hudson? As for Nashua, I did see that post a while back about the downtown being redeveloped. It would have been nice if that came to fruition.
 
Muns1990 said:
the stigma of another Lowell
Click to expand...

that stigma being what? The Merrimack Rep theatre? The Lowell Folk Festival? The Quilt and Textile museums? The minor-league baseball and hockey teams? Tsongas Arena? The national park?
 
SHAZBAT73 said:
Did they ever finish that beltway around Hudson? As for Nashua, I did see that post a while back about the downtown being redeveloped. It would have been nice if that came to fruition.
Click to expand...

That was canned while ago I think.
 
Ron Newman said:
that stigma being what? The Merrimack Rep theatre? The Lowell Folk Festival? The Quilt and Textile museums? The minor-league baseball and hockey teams? Tsongas Arena? The national park?
Click to expand...

A stigma is just a general feeling towards something that at one time may have been true, at one point Lowell was not the greatest place in the world. It doesn't mean that it's not great now, it just means that people who don't know how it has changed still have the feeling that it's crime infested etc. Just like how people who have not been to Providence in some time still look at it as being crappy, but is now very nice.

There were a lot of condo projects going on around S. New Hampshire like three years ago. Like behind fisher cats stadium they built like 8 or 9 condos, and they were supposed to put up like 20, and also build two 6 story apartment buildings with retail on the first floor along the river, but only part of it went through.

This is a link to what was built.

http://www.riverwalkmanchester.com/
 
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