Regarding the design, I think we should compare what is proposed with the likely counterfactual rather than with some ideal.

Consider the likely options with rental buildings. Typically, rental apartment towers are thrown up with the least consideration for exterior aesthetics. Painted concrete, ungainly proportions dictated entirely by interior design, PTACs galore. Or some design that is touted as contextual but value-engineered to the hilt.

Here we have a developer willing to spend some more money on the design. Note for example the way the tower cantilevers over its base floor in the renderings.

But the building is not contextual, the critics say.

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Who here among us would wish the iconic (Broad and Academy) Prudential Plaza had never been built? And yet, does it look like any building around it? Did it look like anything around it when it was built in 1960?

I'm reminded of a Douglas Adams quote about technology, which can readily be paraphrased to apply to the built environment:

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A set of rules that describe standard (NIMBY) reactions to buildings:

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1. Anything that is already built in your town when you are born is normal and ordinary and just a natural part of your world.
2. Anything that is built when you are young is new and exciting.
3. Anything built after you're 30-35 or so is against the natural order of things.