Last year, Crescent Real Estate snapped up a 30-year-old office tower at 2401 Cedar Springs in Uptown. It was the sort of drab, mundane seven story building that is rapidly starting to look out of place in the neighborhood, which is being outfitted with a whole lot of glass. The new renderings instead have a feature that looks like an engorged pneumatic tube system you find at banks. Paper City described architecture firm Corgan’s plans for the building as a “work playland,” complete with “social lounges” that can either be a conference room or a golf simulator. Which, fine, do what you do, but can you leave the sidewalk alone?
A FrontBurnervian who appreciates his morning walk to work sends the photo above this post. Perhaps the golf simulator is too big and dangerous for pedestrians to walk by as it’s being installed. More likely, it’s probably a lot more convenient for the contractors to have a place to put all their construction detritus, sidewalks be damned. Walkers have access to a sliver of the median or they can wander along the street. Your choice. Crescent, meanwhile, has a place to put a billboard along the fence advertising how much space is for rent.
When I pump in the address to Google and set the date to one year ago, you find a decent enough sidewalk along Cedar Springs. It could probably stand to be a few feet larger, but it’ll keep you safe. With the construction, it’s not exactly easy to get to the sidewalk on the other side: there’s a barrier in the form of a median between you. I can see why it is annoying for our FrontBurnervian to walk to work.
I’ve emailed the city about whether this sort of thing is allowed under the revamped right of way ordinance. I can’t seem to find an alternate pedestrian path that doesn’t require stepping through the grassy median. I’ll update when I hear back.
