Ballast PA Practice Question 252

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    Gang Chen, Architect, LEED AP BD+C (Edited )

    I agree with you in a sense. I have done many retail buildings. Since the first floor is retail and the 2nd floor is office. The building should be moved north and closer to the collector street so that the retail stores are more visible from both the local and collector streets since the signage of the stores are one of the may tool to get retail customers. The building entrance should also face either west or north to collect customers from the street. Currently, the signage of the retail stores are blocked by other buildings because the building is set back too far from the main street.

    The entrance of the retail stores should ALWAYS be from the street if possible and at the same elevation as the street level.

    In our practice, one of the major retail tenant asked us to rotate the shop buildings so that the shops will not block their signage. Otherwise they would not even sign the lease to move into the shopping center. Major tenants always have their way, and we had to rotate several shop buildings to meet this demand to make their signs visible from the main street. As a result, we had to step the floors and foundations of the shop buildings because the site slope.

    You are right, it is better to place the parking  on the southwest of the site so that it is easier for people to drive in and out of the parking lot from a local street and will not block the traffic on the main collector street.

    Gang Chen, Author, Architect, LEED AP BD+C (GreenExamEducation.com)

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    Gang Chen, Architect, LEED AP BD+C

    The way the building is layout on the site will make the retail stores go out of business very soon, and the building will be very hard to lease to the next tenants, or even become un-leasable.

    Gang Chen, Author, Architect, LEED AP BD+C (GreenExamEducation.com)

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    Jason Fairbanks

    Putting the parking in the SW would be directly across from the other street which is not safe! Else, I agree with everything else you said. I think the building should be places in NE with main entrance facing collector street with parking in NE, with entrance from collector street. This places parking far away from the intersection.

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