Next Midwest City To Build A Tower Over 700' Tall

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

Yeah but the amount of time between these buildings of improbable height doesn’t translate that there’s any business reason or underlying culture of urbane lifestyle that’s being addressed by these buildings and could simply be written off as a statistical anomoly. . . not trying to put too harsh a tone on it, I watch the development threads for Ohio cities and always root for them when they’re proposing something new, but I don’t see the same enthusiasm for civic pride from the people that live there to suggest otherwise. . . if that makes any sense. . .

. . .

except that you may feel that without any background, but in reality there is and was business reasons for the structures at the time they were built, just as anywhere else. just as there is a very clear reason for the cleveland sherwin williams complex and hq tower soon to be built and built right where it is.

i mean the irony that you work for an ohio company is kinda funny here, so your company aside, consider that maybe there is something more to businesses in ohio than you seem to think.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Long story short, Ohio gonna Ohio

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

Ohio gonna Ohio

Sure will.

Due to its high degree of urban dispersal with the 3 C's, Ohio has more towers over 150m than any other Midwest state (outside of Chicago) with 12.

Though Minnesota is getting awfully close now with 11, including the two it has U/C, all of them in Minneapolis.

[mrnyc]

^ i was about to say, illinois and minn are both one horse town states.

ok twin cites but yeah.

ohio is more a midwest fla, cali or texas type state with the cities. you would think there would be more towering, but actually with little immigration it just kind of dilutes everything. in a good way though i think overall and thats worth fewer big towers.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ i was about to say, illinois and minn are both one horse town states.

but there is something to be said for putting all of your urban eggs into one city basket: it can make one hell of giant skyline!

for instance, illinois has 3x as many 150m towers (all of them in chicago) than the rest of the midwest combined.

that almost certainly wouldn't be the case if illinois had 3 or 4 medium-sized city instead of one single giant alpha city.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

but there is something to be said for putting all of your urban eggs into one city basket: it can make one hell of giant skyline!

for instance, illinois has 3x as many 150m towers (all of them in chicago) than the rest of the midwest combined.

that almost certainly wouldn't be the case if illinois had 3 or 4 medium-sized city instead of one single giant alpha city.

thats exactly why the twin cities do well.

now imagine if the three c’s were combined? or what the heck, throw in the three red headed step sisters too (fyi that means akron, toledo and dayton to non-ohioans lol). it could have been, i mean bring the cattle a little further east back in the old days and chicago would be just another lake michigan vacation area. cleveland did in fact have a big stockyards area too ya know.

or what if all the big cities in fla, penn or texas threw in?

crazy to imagine, but the synergy could even have made them more so than chicago too.

that said, i much prefer things as they are in all these states!

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

the three red headed step sisters too (fyi that means akron, toledo and dayton to non-ohioans lol).

Where does Youngstown fit into that?

Originally Posted by mrnyc

or what if all the big cities in fla, penn or texas threw in?

crazy to imagine, but the synergy could even have made them more so than chicago too.

What's kinda wild is that Chicago, all by itself, has roughly as many 150m towers as Texas and Cali combined!

[MayDay]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Except for Chicago!

Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis ended up over at SSC.

Ohio's 3 C's all ended up at urban Ohio.

And Detroit, STL & KC created their own independent urban development forums.

But Chicago, as the undisputed skyscraper construction king of the midwest, stayed put right here at the original (and still the best!) skyscraper internet forum.

Thanks, I needed a good chuckle today. If SSP is so great (and I've been here long enough I'm allowed to criticize), why is the forum not secure? Oh and why do I have to post a link for an image, instead of a simple drag and drop ... like I can do on UrbanOhio.com's forum? And why was the site unusable for so many, for so long because of spam ads, pop ups, redirects and god only knows what? Original? Sure. Best? Oh look, another image I had to upload, grab a link and then click instead of drag and drop!

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by MayDay

Thanks, I needed a good chuckle today. If SSP is so great (and I've been here long enough I'm allowed to criticize), why is the forum not secure? Oh and why do I have to post a link for an image, instead of a simple drag and drop ... like I can do on UrbanOhio.com's forum? And why was the site unusable for so many, for so long because of spam ads, pop ups, redirects and god only knows what? Original? Sure. Best? Oh look, another image I had to upload, grab a link and then click instead of drag and drop!

You can type https://skyscraperpage.com to get SSL. Agreed that it should probably be mandated.

[The North One]

UrbanOhio looks great. I'm honestly jealous.

I wish Detroityes wasn't such a f*cking horrific 1998 cesspool run by a single elderly man and a gang of bitching baby boomers. Reddit has mostly taken up Detroit online discussion but even the reddit sub is pretty shitty. It sucks that there isn't really any troll-free space to discuss Detroit development. I wonder if I could theoretically start my own site with Wordpress.

Grand Rapids has a very active community on urban planet, I always thought that was random.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by The North One

UrbanOhio looks great. I'm honestly jealous.

I wish Detroityes wasn't such a f*cking horrific 1998 cesspool run by a single elderly man and a gang of bitching baby boomers. Reddit has mostly taken up Detroit online discussion but even the reddit sub is pretty shitty. It sucks that there isn't really any troll-free space to discuss Detroit development. I wonder if I could theoretically start my own site with Wordpress.

Grand Rapids has a very active community on urban planet, I always thought that was random.

man detroit is awesome, though. i have all of these bitchy midwestern vendettas but detroit is still the tits.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

man detroit is awesome, though.

it sure is.

on the topic of midwest skyscrapers, this is just fucking cool no matter how you slice it.


source: https://knightfoundation.org/article...ity-of-design/

[Steely Dan]

unfortunately, recent rumblings in the thread about the sherwin-williams HQ in cleveland say they are leaning away from a new skyline-piercing trophy tower and toward a more campus-style project of multiple shorter towers.


it looks like the wait for a new midwest 700 footer will go on.......

[mhays]

Multiple shorter buildings tends to be the standard corporate approach when land is available and not too expensive. It allows an HQ to scale up (and potentially down), doesn't take so long to build, generally lowers construction cost, and reduces the vertical commute.

In Cleveland's case, it seems nicer to fill multiple blocks with activity vs. a focus on the peak of the skyline.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mhays

Multiple shorter buildings tends to be the standard corporate approach when land is available and not too expensive.

and given all of the open land to work with for this cleveland project, a 700+ foot trophy tower was never going to make any economic sense.

a healthy dose of corporate vanity would've been needed.

[MPLS_Const_Watch]

Could it be?

https://www.bizjournals.com/twinciti...nneapolis.html

[Steely Dan]

^ Well shit, when one door closes, I guess another one really does open up.

If anyone could pull it off, it'd be hines.

And they generally do very nice, if somewhat conservative (or understated, depending on your perspective), towers.


That is some (potentially) very exciting news!!!

<All fingers and toes crossed for minneapolis>

[The North One]

Minneapolis has some of the highest if not highest downtown office vacancy rates in the Midwest so a new office tower makes no sense, especially not now. They're likely going to sit on it for a long time and collect parking revenue.

[Steely Dan]

^ well, the rumors swirling around say Hines might have some very specific targets looking to anchor a brand new trophy tower, so the overall market conditions might not be the last word in this situation.

Obviously, we'll see what happens. That said, if the rumors of a 700K sq ft building are true, it's very possible (likely?) it wouldn't break the 700' ceiling anyway, so.......




But it's always better to dream!

[MPLS_Const_Watch]

Originally Posted by The North One

Minneapolis has some of the highest if not highest downtown office vacancy rates in the Midwest so a new office tower makes no sense, especially not now. They're likely going to sit on it for a long time and collect parking revenue.

I don't know about elsewhere, but yes, our office vacancy is pretty high right now.

It's entirely possible that Hines is playing the long game-- maybe Hines saw an opportunity to buy what is probably the singular most eligible property for office development in the entire state at a discount given the current market, and plan to hang on to it for 5, 10, 15 years.

The other possibility is that they either have a marquee anchor tenant locked in, or are preparing the whole project with the intent of marketing to a particular anchor tenant.

I would note that this site is less than a block from Target's main cluster of offices, and that Target's leased space at City Center (900k sqft) a few blocks away ends in December 2023 (they do have options beyond this, however). Target has also been kicking ass lately.

There are other major players that could be interested as well. A lot of the vacant space in Minneapolis is in smaller chunks, rather than big contiguous segments that could be occupied by a large user. Much of the space might also not be very appealing to certain users. The Dayton's Project comes to mind as a ton of space that is probably not very appealing to a law firm or investment bank. There are some other things going on locally that could motivate some big moves-- US Bank has been pushing for more space both at US Bank Plaza and US Bankcorp Center, displacing other users. RBC relocating to their marquee new building could motivate some who compete for talent with them to seek a higher-end space as well. We also still don't really know all of the long-term impacts of COVID on the office market. Will there be some employers who really want their employees to be physically in the office and who will be willing and able to pay for more space per employee to make sure they can always do that? Or to just be in a new building whose HVAC was designed in the COVID era?

For one reason or another, Hines is exploring a large office project here. And that's something to be hopeful and excited about.