Troubling Developments
“I can’t think of anywhere else in the city where there is more than a two-story building in an otherwise residential/single-home neighborhood,” a letter writer to the News points out in her opposition to the Elks/Avery House project. “Such discrepancies between the heights of the dwellings change the feel of a neighborhood and make it feel less like someplace you want to live.” Perhaps we could eliminate these discrepancies by requiring every building in the area to be at least four stories.
“I urge the City Council not to approve this project,” she continues. “The proposed rezoning opens up a currently nice residential neighborhood to all kinds of troubling developments, once there is an exception made for this type of project. ” Although apparently not nice enough for the letter writer, who has moved out of the neighborhood.
i work in the argus building, a 100-year old, four-story building smack dab in the middle of the old west side, an archetypal residential/single-home neighborhood.
posted by peter honeyman on June 8th, 2007 at 12:57 pmNevermind the 70’s era 3 and 4 story multi-lot cheap-ass apartment buildings that are scattered throughout neighborhoods all over town… not that those are worthy of emulation, but they’re certainly there.
I live a few blocks away from this project, and it’s the sort of thing we expected to happen in a neighborhood that’s this close to downtown. You know, that whole ‘a greenbelt will encourage higher-density infill development’ thing. I guess the nimby crowd expected that to happen elsewhere.
The lesson here ought to be to join your local secret geriatric brotherhood and tithe enthusiastically to help them avoid becoming cash-strapped enough to be bought off by developers, who probably figure that they’ll have a nice clubhouse for their condo owners once the elks are all dead.
You know, opponents should have tried to get the Elks declared an endangered species, that would probably have tied this up in council long enough to bleed away the developer’s margin.
posted by eli on June 8th, 2007 at 5:46 pmThis sounds like one of the oft uttered criticisms of AAIO in reverse:
“If you hate it so much, why don’t you leave?”
“if you love it so much, why don’t you stay?”
Hilarious shit.
posted by peter on June 9th, 2007 at 2:32 pmi live around the corner from this proposed project. i would be thrilled to see it happen. this is not burns park. this is not geddes heights. we need more income in the neighboorhood. we need more development. we need to become closer to downtown. what we don’t need is more naysayers or more progress impeding regulations.
posted by pam on June 13th, 2007 at 10:18 pm