Good News for the North Site!

Sorry for the delay! I know it’s been a while since we filled you in on our development of the North Site. We have been busy developing our idea for Senior housing in Over-the-Rhine, and we almost forgot to share our progress with everyone. Let me fill you in on what we have come up with so far:

After much discussion, we determined that in order to make this project viable, we must come up with a simple solution. We knew we wanted to include HUD 202 and Low Income Tax Credit units into the design, so we split the facility into two buildings. The East building would house the HUD202 units while the West building would house the Low Income Tax Credit units. Where both buildings met near the corner of 15^th and Race Streets would become the main entrance into the facility that incorporates a vehicular drop-off area as well.

Parking was designed to accommodate 28 parking spots tucked under the East building. This required us to create a vehicular entrance that ramps down a full level from 15^th Street. Prior to ramping down, the vehicular entrance doubles as the drop off for the facility.

Keeping to our established goals, we made sure our design maintained the existing 2 buildings on the site. Of those existing buildings, the building on Pleasant Street will be left vacant, while the one on Race Street will absorb many of the community functions for the East building. We also wanted to leave the empty lot on the corner of 15^th and Race Streets open so that it could turn into a primary green space for the residents of the facility. To preserve the scale of Race and Pleasant streets, our new buildings would be limited to 3-4 stories.

Earlier in the week, we assembled schematic plans for the facility. As of now, our design accommodates 46 HUD202 Units and another 30 Low income Tax Credit Units. This puts us right in the established “sweet” spot for assisted living facilities of 75 to 100 units. We urge you to take a look at our plans below. We are looking for community partners who want to make our vision a reality.

Parking Garage Site Plan

Ground Level Site Plan

West Facility Ground Level Plan

West Facility Upper Levels Plan

East Facility Ground Level Plan

East Facility Upper Levels Plan

Both Facilities Upper Levels Plan

Potential Green Space on Upper Level

How do you draw a building you cannot measure?

One of the biggest struggle with working in the church is measurements and understanding what is happening inside the building.  We are not allowed in the church, as currently there are two massive cranes taking new pieces of the church each day.  The condition of the church is not structurally secure, therefore we do not want to risk going inside.  So how do you make drawings?  We counted a lot of bricks... well we did measured what we could and then we used images to fill in the rest. 

We did basic floorplans and elevation AutoCAD drawings, but more interesting was we worked on a SketchUp model.  The space is a huge volume to help us understand that we decided to model it.  Below are some pictures of model of the condition before the cranes started.  Let us know what you think.

We will be posting new construction pictures in a few days so check back!

Hello there, old friend(s)!

We can’t believe we’re almost halfway thru March!! Where, oh where, does the time go?

The past week or so has been very busy for us.  Between spring break (yes, you read that correctly, we had spring break) and helping out at our favorite place, Peaslee, it feels like its still, well… February.

Peaslee has asked us to help out with their new Safety City set up.  It is important for Peaslee to make Safety City long lasting yet effective in teaching the kids the magnitude of safety.  So, channeling our inner child, we came up with a road map template (see image below) that Peaslee will be able to use over and over again. The road map also serves as a drawing template base plan that the little ones can use for coloring or describing what they have learned. 

We also traveled up north to Dayton to meet up with Miami Professor Mary Rogero and visit Urban Krag. Did you know Urban Krag is an old church in the Oregon District that was converted into a Climbing Wall Facility? It is actually the tallest Climbing Wall in the state!! Although the church is about half the size of our church, they could fit a max of twenty-four people on the wall, and needless to say we were inspired to pursue our urban retreat facility in our church. Thanks so much to Urban Krag for giving us the behind the scenes tour, we really appreciate it and had a blast! 

Okay okay, here are some pictures of Urban Krag! You're Welcome!!

Speaking of churches, have you seen what has been happening on ours? The top clock tower of the church is now gone, and the steeple is boarded up.  We aren’t quite sure about the new roofing trusses, they are a bit hard for us to understand.  However, they are bricking back up the sides, so it is nice to see more revitalization efforts instead of old, broken roof trusses being cut down.

Again, thanks for stopping by.  Have a great week!

What could a church be re-used as?

This is the questions was have been working on for the past few weeks, we finally have an answer for you.  We want to turn it into a CLIMBING WALL FACILITY.  It might sound strange at first, but think you need high areas with an open floor plan...which is what a church is.  We have found other churches that use this idea.  We will be working next week on the design, so if you have any input let us know!

Below are links to some other church turned climbing wall facility.

Urban Krag- Dayton, OH

Awesome Wall- Liverpool, England