Currently a modest office building at the corner of Wade Hampton and Maple (across from the Amphora), this is now slated to become yet-more-housing on Maple Avenue, under MAC zoning. The proposed building would be about 55′ tall, would more-or-less fill the lot (with a 30′ wide access road in the back), and house roughly 40 condos (a mix of 2- and 3-bedroom) and 7500 square feet of retail space.
This is to be discussed in a Town Council work session on 9/12/2018. Plausibly, the builder may attempt to submit plans before September 17. That’s the date when the Town Council will vote to place a moratorium on additional MAC submissions until after the next Town Council election.
As with the other MAC proposals, you should look at the individuals in the picture below (from the developers’ plans (.pdf) to get a feel for the scale of the building. (There are in the lower left of the picture, walking toward you from this perspective.)
It appears that the garage space will empty onto Wade Hampton. So, as with 444 Maple West/Tequila Grande, individuals from this building who want to get to Metro or I-66 in the morning will either have to make a left turn across morning rush hour traffic on Maple, or cut through Glen Avenue to get to the light at Courthouse and Nutley.
This is now the second proposal for Maple where the main building to be replaced is a currently viable business. So if you hear the Town talk about how MAC is there to prevent blight, just take a look at the current office building, and see that it’s not blighted. The main economic driver behind MAC buildings is not the “blighted” character of what we have. The main driver is the profitability of building housing on Maple Avenue.
