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As announced about a month ago, the heavily damaged Kingswood Building on Grandview Avenue would need to be razed and rebuilt after the destruction caused by the Grandview fire on January 17th. Next week the building is scheduled to come down, and a similar two-story structure is planned to take its place with a mix of ground-floor retail and second-floor residential units.
According to this This Week News article, it sounds as if the the new building could be up as soon as September, 2010.
I hope the new building retains the character of the old one.
I agree with Anne, I hope that there is a lot of consideration to the design given, either to give it the same old Grandview Ave feel or else to make it an outstanding modern building. I’d just like it to be something special.
I wonder if this will impact the Grandview Yard project at all. There’s got to be some level of overlap right? Maybe not.
I feel like this block was the heart of Grandview Ave. It was the image that popped into my head whenever I thought about Grandview. I hope the new building will be able to fill those shoes.
I’m some what surprised they are only going to replace it with a two story structure. I would’ve thought they would have at least gone with a 3 stories. It’s a great location and I think some nicer apartments would do great there. The area is pretty much saturated with condos, but in general I’ve found that the apartments typically aren’t very nice. A lot of them need some work and if they could get some mid priced apartments in there I think it would help the housing mix.
Also I’m glad they are keeping the retail on the first floor. It would be awesome if they could salvage the Kingswood Building stone work and integrate it into the new structure.
There are plenty of blotches on Grandview that need infill, so I wouldn’t worry about the building being two stories.
I assume that the building owner is getting insurance money that is going to cover most of the cost of replacing the building that was lost. I’m really not too surprised that they don’t want to invest even more in building something larger.
they probably cant get an attractive loan to build something bigger than what their insurance payout would allow for
a little bird told me that the building will be 3 or 4 stories.
I worked in the second floor of that building. Thankfully my employer has relocated. I live in the nieghborhood and it is really sad walking past the burned out hulk. I will never forget January 17, 2009.
As far as the replacement being two stories, that does not surprise me. Parking is at a premium even with the church and back parkinglots. There is also not a great demand for condo or office space in Grandview at the moment. When looking for office space to relocate to I was surprised to see a lot of space available.
The location is great and I hope Wagenbrenner builds something fitting, and I am pretty sure they will. I will also add, they did a great job of enlivening the Kingswood Bldg a few years ago by painting the outside different pastel colors and breaking it up with a nice awning treatment. Before that the building was kind of monotonous.
I worked in that building for over 12 years and have many fond memories.
An update on the Grandview Ave. Kingswood Building.
Most of the building is gone, just a few piles of scorched debris left.