17 thoughts on “315 West Ponce Gets New Look”


  4. Yeah, living on the other side, we watched the parking deck get a two-tone paint job late last week using this battleship blue gray and a kind of a taupe. Our first reaction was “the ’80s called and they want their parking deck back,” but in the days since we’ve noticed that it does have an uncanny way of diminishing the structure and making it disappear a bit, especially in combination with any foliage. So… yay?

  6. *sigh* I’m trying to be positive about this whole development, but I have to confess: Do not like. Maybe this is just the first phase of the new paint…or maybe it looks better in person (I haven’t been down to see it yet). Comme ci, comme ca.

  10. I agree with lumpintheroad. The warm taupe color helps diminish the size of the structure. Not so for the battleship grey color. It has the opposite effect. Better to stick with warm colors if blending is the goal.

  12. Got to drive by and check this out consciously. I think the disruption of the sidewalk and street has distracted me from the building. My brain was categorizing whatever I was seeing on the building as “construction”–maybe primer, kind of like metal pylons/girders used to be painted with some protective orangey color before they were painted their final sedate color?

  14. Be honest. It looks atrocious.

    The building is a dated eyesore, and now it is a conspicuous, dated eyesore. They are not even painting the window trim a different color for contrast. I would think when you have a monolithic, soviet-looking structure, you may not want to paint it monochromatically in battleship gray.

    The plan they presented 2 years ago showed that the high-rise stayed white, and the addition had some gray elements that set it off from the white.

    http://www.decaturmetro.com/2013/02/21/315-west-ponce-development-is-back-and-zoning-compliant/

    I guess they changed their mind. How disappointing.

    1. 1) “Atrocious” is a bit dramatic, but if ya don’t like it, ya don’t like it.

      2) How do you know they won’t be setting off the window trim? If they’re still putting on the base color, it stands to reason that they’d finish that first and then make a second pass with any (likely darker) trim colors.

      3) I think you were maybe interpreting too much from those initial renderings. As someone who was at the table for every one of those meetings and paying close attention (incidentally, it was a year ago, not two), I don’t think any promises were made regarding what would happen to the existing office building other than it would not undergo any substantial structural changes but that they would try to integrate it with the new construction as best they could. So my assumption was actually that they WOULD paint it, because that’s really the only option left to them. The fact that it’s white in that rendering is just a coincidence, not a promise that it would stay that color. In renderings showing new construction in proximity to existing buildings, those existing structures are usually rendered white and featureless just to represent the scale of the occupied space without distracting from the details of the new construction that is being highlighted.

      1. I don’t think they are going to come back and paint the trim because they painted around the windows first very deliberately, and then sprayed the superstructure. Why take the care to paint the trim first if you are just going to paint over it? By my reckoning, you would just tape and cover-paper the windows and paint the superstructure if you were going to come back and detail the windows.

        They drew their rendering of the structure and what it would look like finished and it included taupe to match the existing brick and then gray elements. I went to the meetings too and they mentioned at that time the color scheme, and how they wanted to incorporate it into the colors of the existing building so the addition didn’t look obviously incongruous.
        I never said they promised to leave it taupe, and its kind of silly to suggest that I am saying they broke a promise. I do think this is different then what they originally planned and what they said they were going to do at meetings, but the color scheme and aesthetics of the building were never really discussed in detail.

        I’m just giving my opinion that I think its ugly.

        1. Driving by this morning in contrast to what this picture shows, it appears that most of the building remains ivory and they’re using the blue gray as the window trim color, with some vertical portions (corners and middle) painted solid blue gray. And none of it looks finished. So I guess we’ll have to wait and see how the whole thing looks in the end. I’m not loving it either, and not defending the color scheme per se, just their right to paint it however they please.

  16. When they started with the lighter blue-ish primer color (disclaimer: I’m a male, so I’m accused of bad color descriptions) on the end, spouse aptly named it “VA hospital blue.” It blended in well with the sky some days (we live in the Artisan and stare at it).

    Then we realized it was just a primer/base coat, and the next color was worse. And now that ivory color (and the pure white base). I realize painting a building takes time. But they are proceeding at such a seemingly slow and halting pace, part of me wonders if they are painting “samples” on the building and so the architect can take a look and make up their mind.

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