Dust to Dust

On today's podcast, I talked a bit about an old building that had been raised to make way for.....absolutely nothing. Sure, its nice to have open space, but at the price of the loss of an old building? It was supposedly condemned, but many a condemned building has been brought back to life, if not totally restored.

It is said that the land will be used for concerts, a farmer's market, activities and the like. Nice thought, but again, at the cost of an old building that once had a place in the town. And, I guess the fact that right on the very edge of town, not all that far from where the building was, is the fair grounds which is empty 95% of the time. There are bleachers, buildings, parking......everything you need to hold events, farmer's markets, concerts.....Hmmmmm......

It was also said that they talked about saving the facade of the building as sort of a gateway into the event area. However they then decided it wasn't feasible. I then read that they decided it WAS feasible to take down the facade, and rebuild it. Maybe I'm missing something, but how is it less feasible to keep an existing facade and stabilize it for use, than it is to tear it down, clean all the old bricks, because they have decided to use all the original bricks from the facade and all of that old mortar will have to come off, then rebuild the facade exactly as it was, but was not feasible to keep?

As I said, maybe I'm missing something here, but something doesn't sound quite right to me. And it is unfortunate that with all of these old buildings going up for sale in this NY town, it seems that they are being purchased by those who either want to tear them down, re-muddle them or do absolutely nothing except put high rents on them.

Where I live now, some people bought some old Florida buildings and promised that they would keep the "Old Florida" character. Guess how these brilliant minds are doing it. By tearing down the real "Old Florida" and putting up new buildings that will supposedly replicate "Old Florida".  HUH??? People tried to fight it, but the powers that be, even though they had public hearings, really had no interest in hearing what the people had to say, unless it was exactly what THEY wanted to hear.

These buildings were in good shape AND full of boutique shops and little restaurants, some who had been there for years, if not decades. But they are all gone now because a developer decided that the real "Old Florida" buildings had to be replaced with fake "Old Florida" buildings in order to have an "Old Florida" atmosphere. Uh...yeah....sure.... Plus, all of the people who were there lost their livelihoods. Oh, they were invited to come back. But rents were too high. So, there you have it!

It is sad as to what is happening to our old buildings in this country. Yes, many are non descript and some have been left so long, they are truly beyond help. Others may not be historic, but are still in decent shape, so why should they be, basically sent to the landfill for something shiny and new?  Maybe developers need to rethink their strategies and instead of destroying more land or more old buildings, use what is already available to them. And don't try to say that you're "saving history" by tearing history down to replace it with reproduction "history". That makes absolutely no sense, especially when the historic buildings were totally usable.