By his own estimation, architect Bill Atwood is the sort of guy who puts too many ornaments on the Christmas tree. During a recent meeting of the city’s Board of Architectural review—in which he presented a new, significantly reconfigured design of his five-year-old Waterhouse project—the board confirmed as much.
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The new design of Waterhouse, which maintains developer Bill Atwood’s goal of mixed use within a more horizontal structure, stands three stories shorter than his last design. Atwood says he has recruited a company for the proposed Downtown structure. |
“The whole thing needs to be simplified, really massively,” said board member and UVA preservation planner Brian Hogg. Fellow BAR member Eryn Brennan, president of Preservation Piedmont, agreed.
“I’ll just say briefly: Corbusian cruise ship meets ziggurat Frank Lloyd Wright,” said Brennan.
But if Brennan, Hogg and a few other members took issue with a few ornaments, Atwood’s tree at 218 W. Water Street won a few words of praise. South Street homeowner Brent Nelson told Atwood that his design—lowered to a six-story “village” from a nine-story tower, and extended horizontally towards South Street—was Atwood’s “best design yet.”
“What this change allows is for a building that more successfully allows for needs on Water Street, but also creates a presence on South Street more appropriate for the houses that lie across the street,” said Nelson. BAR chair Fred Wolf told Atwood to refine his drawings, and then “let this thing be read as a village—a really nice term, the way you described it.”
Atwood’s Waterhouse village maintains a mixed-use approach, with two stories of office space situated between a lower story devoted to parking and capped by residential units. “If you can recruit a company to be on two floors, and they’re currently on four, and you have an atrium,” said Atwood during an interview, “you can see your company. There’s a one-ness.” Companies, according to Atwood, don’t want towers.
And a company is Atwood’s great hope for seeing his project realized. He told the BAR and C-VILLE that he had recruited a business to come Downtown, and would give its name at a later date. According to Atwood, the business is “a national company that wants a brand.”
At this point, Atwood says he has abandoned the idea of a tower—a significant change from four years ago, when Waterhouse was one of a few nine-story projects vying for the sky in Charlottesville. When the city rezoned Downtown in 2008 to create three separate corridors—Downtown, South Street and Water Street—site plans for both Waterhouse and the Landmark Hotel had been approved.
And while Atwood calls the Landmark “one of the most devastating things to happen to this town,” he concedes that Waterhouse might have followed the same path, had it not lost a loan when Lehman Brothers filed the largest bankruptcy claim in U.S. history. “We were headed right down that road to building a tall building,” Atwood told C-VILLE. For now, and as long as he stays at the drawing board, Atwood has another shot at the one thing the Landmark does not—a first impression.
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