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August 25, 2022

Renderings by Handel Architects [enlarge]

Looking southeast, Eighth is in the foreground as it crosses Blanchard.

One more round of design review should come this fall for Silverstein Properties’ planned 44-story, 418-unit apartment tower at 801 Blanchard St. Plans are very well advanced for the project, designed by Handel Architects. Turner Construction is newly attached as the builder.
No start date has been announced for the Denny Triangle building, which will cantilever, beginning at its sixth floor, over the Silverstein-owned Butcher’s Table building. That formidable feat of structural engineering is being overseen by Magnusson Klemencic Associates.
And, on the block’s pointy south corner, 801 Blanchard will also cantilever over the separately owned little Shake Shack property. (More on that below.)
The architect writes, “The gradual cantilever is achieved through a balanced arrangement of outwardly sloping columns and is expressed architecturally as interlocking terraced setbacks.”
As for MKA’s challenge, says Handel, “In order to free up interior space, the building uses an exoskeleton structural system. The skin of the building serves as a frame, and the traditional center core is removed. This robust concrete frame creates an alternating rhythm as it rises, framing large expanses of glass for the units.”
Handel’s latest city filings for the project depict relatively minor design tweaks. (The last review was in May.) Most notable to future passersby is a lighter palette for the four-story base, which butts up against the Butcher’s Table building, itself an amalgam of old and recent construction.
On the levels above, to help delineate between the two-part facade scheme (pleated versus conventional framed windows), Handel emphasizes the contrast between champagne-colored metal pleats and the silvery white hue of the vertical facade elements.
The two-part notion derives from Handel calls its pinwheel theme, “creating slender vertical profiles from different vantage points.” Early hand-drawn design studies chronicle the development of the pinwheel idea.
The 801 Blanchard team also includes Rushing, MEP engineer; KPFF, civil engineer; Berger Partnership, landscape architect; Bush, Roed & Hitchings, surveyor; and McCullough Hill Leary, land use attorney.

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The project entered design review last year with a nominal value of $215 million. The Mandatory Housing Affordability payment is now estimated at a little over $4.4 million for an over 500,000-square-foot project. That number includes a small amount of retail, amenities and the automated and stacked parking — that having 57 stalls on two underground levels.
Back to the 3,000-square-foot Shake Shack triangle. That’s owned by a local dentist who moved his office and leased the century-old little building to Shake Shack, which opened four years ago.
Handel explains that cantilever thusly: “The Shake Shack building has a separate owner, and as part of our agreement to cantilever 801 Blanchard over their building, they have the right to vertically expand the Shake Shack building up to the same height as the Butcher’s Table.” That’s roughly 52 feet, plus an elevator overrun structure — so perhaps 60 feet in total. No new plans have been filed there.

Brian Miller can be reached by email at

br**********@dj*.com

or by phone at (206) 219-6517.