Monday, November 24, 2003
Here's to condos and historic demolition
Sunday morning a developer snuck in at 7 a.m. and tore down four 150-year-old buildings to make way for a brand new condominium development. And, predictably, everybody whined about it. It's as if old necessarily means important. To review, these buildings were:
-ugly
-of questionable historical significance
-vacant for the past 15 years
-really ugly
No one could quite pin down why these buildings were important.
"Well, they're known as the Old Ice Plant Buildings," a Historical Society nerd would say.
"Hmm, so did they once house an ice plant?"
"Well, we're not sure. In fact we're not exactly sure when they were built. But, did we mention they're historical?"
So, yes, this is the classic big developer vs. the little guy, except, Jesus, downtown Baton Rouge can use every development it can get. Two-thirds of the storefronts are shuttered up, you can't get a bite to eat after 2 (that's p.m. and I'm not kidding) and I stumbled home last half a mile through downtown Friday night without seeing a single pedestrian.
In a town of 230,000 people there are exactly four bars in the entire downtown (and a State Capitol full of corrupt drunks with kick-back money just waiting to be infused into the local economy). In fact, there are more churches than bars downtown, which is never a good sign. So, you know what, good riddance to semi-historic, blighted store fronts and welcome to condominiums which, at the very least, will house people who may demand a decent number of places at which to get drunk and forget they live in Baton Rouge.
-ugly
-of questionable historical significance
-vacant for the past 15 years
-really ugly
No one could quite pin down why these buildings were important.
"Well, they're known as the Old Ice Plant Buildings," a Historical Society nerd would say.
"Hmm, so did they once house an ice plant?"
"Well, we're not sure. In fact we're not exactly sure when they were built. But, did we mention they're historical?"
So, yes, this is the classic big developer vs. the little guy, except, Jesus, downtown Baton Rouge can use every development it can get. Two-thirds of the storefronts are shuttered up, you can't get a bite to eat after 2 (that's p.m. and I'm not kidding) and I stumbled home last half a mile through downtown Friday night without seeing a single pedestrian.
In a town of 230,000 people there are exactly four bars in the entire downtown (and a State Capitol full of corrupt drunks with kick-back money just waiting to be infused into the local economy). In fact, there are more churches than bars downtown, which is never a good sign. So, you know what, good riddance to semi-historic, blighted store fronts and welcome to condominiums which, at the very least, will house people who may demand a decent number of places at which to get drunk and forget they live in Baton Rouge.
