Amid heaps of seeming junk in Oliver Kuttner’s workshop on E. Market Street sits a steel skeleton portending the next big building on the Downtown Mall, on the site of the former Boxer Learning center. It’s a massing model, designed to show the Board of Architectural Review (www.charlottesville.org) what the size might look like as he transforms what he calls a “Mussolini”-looking structure into something “a little funny.”
This missing model for Oliver Kuttner’s redevelopment of the Boxer Learning center shows in concept how he’ll turn a "monstrous" building into one with a sense of humor. It’s shown from the Second Street point-of-view with the Mall on the left.
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“I’m trying to build as big a building that looks as little as possible,” says Kuttner, and despite an early morning, he is abuzz about his plans while shuffling through photos—of marble and steel in China, of preliminary work in his Lynchburg office, of design inspirations from anywhere. He points out a picture of a facade being made in China from cookware-worthy stainless steel. “You couldn’t pay for that here.”
What will be in the building? Kuttner wants several floors of retail by opening up the basement as a courtyard along the side street and creating a second floor of retail fronting the Mall. He plans four apartments above the retail in a first phase of redevelopment. The second phase will be a larger structure closer to Water Street that nears the nine-storey limit, which will contain either a 72-room hotel—or affordable apartments at around $500 a month.
“In Charlottesville, you can’t rent anything cheap any more,” says Kuttner. “I think that with clever design I can do it.”
Part of the challenge for Kuttner is to build using a minimum of space. “When I build it, I’m going to pretend that I’m in Manhattan.” To do this, he plans to prefabricate portions in China and then Lynchburg, and put it together in Charlottesville, Lego-style. “If I figure out how to build a hotel in extremely cramped quarters efficiently, I want to build a couple of them in really tight places, like Manhattan.”
That would also allow him to scale back if necessary—even after it’s built. “I’m perfectly prepared to bring the building up,” says Kuttner, “and if I see it’s too imposing somewhere or too big—cut it off.”
Even with the hotel, retail and apartments, Kuttner still has space fronting Water Street for a third phase. “If [the hotel]’s really successful, then we put more hotel there. If it’s not really successful, we put something else there,” like a Porsche dealership. “I like Porsches. I
always have.”