Jun 30, 2009
New Carter Blood Care Building on Rosedale
By: Kevin Buchanan
Carter Blood Care, Rosedale Elevation
Been wondering about the fence & trailer surrounding the block bounded by Rosedale, 5th, Lake, and Oleander in the Near Southside? Well, here’s what is going on there: the construction of the new Carter Blood Care office building.
Now, looking at the rendering and the site plan, it might strike you that this is not a particularly impressive building. The building is single-use and features parking located towards Oleander, even though Oleander zoning requires storefront-style ground floor facades and at least some residential use. The explanation is that the Carter Blood Care building has been approved for quite some time – it dates back before the Near Southside development standards and all the Oleander requirements.
If you ask us, there ought to be a limit on how long plans can sit approved when there’s radical zoning & design standard changes taking place (if they sought approval today, the new building would be in no way compatible with the Oleander zoning & standards), but that’s a moot point in this case. Carter Blood Care did compromise, though, and pushed its parking away from Oleander. Facing Oleander will be a small pocket park instead. It’ll be a little basic at first, going by the renderings, but we bet that the Near Southside TIF could come back and improve the park at a later date. We just hope this doesn’t set a precedent for incompatible designs along Oleander (with the Near Southside standards and Oleander’s T4-N zoning, it shouldn’t be able to).
We’ll grab some construction shots once things really kick off. In the meantime, here’s the rendering and the site plan.
Carter Blood Care, Site Plan
does it really cost that much more to build a decent looking structure??? Just boggles my mind!
Blech. I seriously think anything that was approved before the guidelines and hasn’t been built yet should have to be re-approved. This is freakin’ Oleander we’re talking about. It should be lined with buildings, not parking lots of half-hearted “parks.”
Yes, sometimes it does cost much more for a ‘decent’ looking building, or I guess what is considered ‘decent’ design can definitely be subjective.
Many times a rendering is just a basic visual of what will transpire. The finished product ends up being very desirable! It can be difficult to transition in one’s mind between ink/paper and actual stone/brick/etc. Please be patient!
This is a simple yet effective design that more than likely worked within the potential limited budget of the client. Remember, we are in the middle of tough economic times too.
Not all design needs to be overly ornate to be effective and compatible!
Just my 2 cents….
I wish they had built the building right up on Oleander and left the surface parking lot facing Rosedale. I wish Carter would voluntarily change their plan but I suspect it would trigger brain damage and costs to take it back through the City for re-approval. Additionally, they should have planned an additional 5-6 trees to better shade that big parking lot.
I hope everyone recognizes that this is the kind of site plan that is virtually required by our current City zoning and landscape ordinances, replete with big setbacks, wide curb cuts, and sprawling unshaded parking lots. This retro site plan demonstrates how tremendously positive the new guidelines are that Fort Worth South and the Fort Worth Planning & Development Department implemented. I think this really demonstrates that similar guidelines need to be put in place throughout the city.
Just a point of clarification. The Near South district does not fall under the City’s Urban Forestry ordinance unless there are “significant” trees on-site. So, if this project were constructed outside the Near South area, the parking lot and drives would have been required to have 40% tree canopy coverage.
It would be nice to at least to change the hard standing for the parking area over to pervious pavement (stop that runoff when it does rain!) and to add some nice bike racks too. Also how about a xeriscape landscape that does not require loads of irrigation.
So who designed the building?
Nathan,
The building was designed (as far as I can tell, anyway) by Hahnfeld Hoffer Stanford.