A meeting was held tonight at the American Tobacco building about the proposed development at Cedar and Broad Streets. What is now surface parking wrapping around the McDonald’s could become 160+ apartments and a 5,000 square foot retail space.

• Parking will be in a courtyard inside the building. The buildings will go to the property line.
• The current plans show cars entering the courtyard through Broad Street. The architect (Walter Parks) seemed receptive to the observation that this would be a traffic disaster, mentioning earlier versions with cars entering/exiting on 18th Street.
• It is the same developer and architect as American Tobacco. They envision a similar development, but new construction instead of redevelopment.
• They need a special use permit as the land is current zoned M-1, which does not allow residential.
• They haven’t applied for any permits yet. They stated that they wanted to get this in front of the community early in the process.
• The highest point of the building would be 20 feet below the top of Jefferson Park. The highest end of the building would be at 18th Street.
• The 3 to 4 story size is seen as a match to the scale of the Sisson building and Cold Storage.
• There would be a pool on the roof.
• They would have liked to have removed or incorporated the McDonald’s, but the corporation/franchisee wouldn’t go for it.

I’ll have better images sometime on Tuesday.

DISCLOSURE: I’ve got family that works for Walter Parks, and I designed and built his website.