Just how high does a 136-foot-tall building look?
The Holladay Planning Commission will see Tuesday that it all depends on where the high-rise is positioned and from where you’re looking at it.
The impressions the commissioners come away with could be key to how they respond overall to a proposal by Ivory Homes and Woodbury Corp. to revise a dormant plan for the 57-acre site of the former Cottonwood Mall. The developers’ plan is to make two-thirds of it residential while giving a much-reduced office and commercial zone a signature showpiece — a 136-foot office tower with striking views of Mount Olympus.
The commission asked the developers to come to Tuesday’s 7 p.m. meeting equipped with images of how that 12-story structure would look from numerous perspectives:
• With the tower positioned at several points on the property, ranging from the developers’ preferred corner of Highland Drive and Murray-Holladay Road to the back eastern edge, abutting Memorial Holladay Cemetery.
• As it’s seen from properties along the periphery of the mall site, such as the TechnaGlass shop to the north or the state liquor store to the west.
“I get the sense that 136 is a number you’re trying to get your arms around,” said Ivory Homes President Chris Gamvroulas. “We can explore different ways to tier up [from surrounding buildings] and show what those angles are.”
Josh Woodbury, whose family company is focusing on developing the 17-acre mixed-use portion of the proposal, said the best location for the tower is on the street corner — and that 136 feet is the right height.
“Why? It works,” he said. “We’re trying to attract a high-profile corporate headquarters, [the type of company] who would want something iconic. They would really like 160 feet. But we think 136 gets what we need.”
That height makes it more economical to incorporate covered parking into the project’s interior, Woodbury said, and marks a complete departure from the old mall’s visual as a sea of asphalt around a long block of building.
Responded Planning Commission Chairman James Carter: “An iconic office tower could be located on the east boundary — where neighbors are in the cemetery — with a grand boulevard leading up to it. I don’t know that the location of the building needs to be where it is to get the corporate headquarters feel.”
Woodbury expressed a willingness to look at that idea, but said, “To me, that’s counterintuitive. We were looking at the best place for an iconic property to activate the intersection. On the corner, it makes a statement.”
Gamvroulas added that Holladay’s whole purpose in creating a redevelopment area there a decade ago was to stimulate development on all four corners of the intersection, not just the old mall parcel.
“We want to put as much commercial emphasis on the corner [as possible] to spur development across the street,” he said, referring to a fenced-off gas station on one adjacent corner and the Woodbury-owned Creekside Place strip mall to the west.
“We’ve owned that property for 30 years and wanted to invest in it, but we’re not going to throw good money after bad when the neighborhood is deteriorating,” Woodbury said of Creekside.
Fixing up the old mall site would reverse that decline and trigger investment, he said, but it’s essential that planners identify “if there are pockets [of the mall parcel] where you would let us get that 136 [foot height limit].”
While building height is expected to dominate the commission’s conversations Tuesday, further discussion is likely on concerns expressed about the project’s traffic impacts, limited green space and internal connections between the 17-acre mixed-use zone and the 40 acres of residential land to the south.
Carter, the commission chairman, indicated last week that one or two more meetings may be needed before planners make a recommendation to the City Council about whether to approve, deny or modify the developers’ request to change the 2007 plan for the mall site.
The City Council then will hold a series of public hearings before deciding.
