I think it looks nice, but I don’t understand why they’re building to less than half the allowed height. Why not build a building with half the footprint, at the height allowed by the zoning (27 floors)? Then they’d have just as much classroom space as they’re getting now, but be able to expand in the future on the underbuilt side. As it stands, if they want to expand in the future they’ll either have to demolish some of their substantial structures (causing a space crunch and disruption to classroom activities for years between the demolition of the old structure and opening of the new structure) or buy more land (expensive).
The county did the same thing at the courthouse site. Built to only 6 stories even though 27 is allowed. The new courthouse has fewer floors than the old 1950’s courthouse! And they had to demolish millions of dollars of buildings and displace people in order to get that huge footprint. Including a supportive housing building.
A private developer would never leave half the allowed density on the table, because they have an incentive to be cost effective. The county should also try to be cost effective for taxpayers but I don’t see that they even try.
We have the address, height for it in feet, and corrected number of stories (12) from the official city development application now:
