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PHOTO BY PETE McCOMMONS
& FOUNDRY
Free Advice
THE BATTLE FOR DOWNTOWN Reading Brad Aaron's piece on the future of downtown (p. 8) pretty much gives us the message that
regardless of rising property values and outside chains sniffing around, downtown will continue as the locus of local enterprises. Implicit
in his story, however, is the warning that the greatest threat to downtown may lie not with national chains but with local businesses.
The local Ber.son Company, for instance, owns the Holiday Inn on the west side of downtown. Now that company says it is preparing
to build a seven-story hotel on the east side of downtown and is tearing down half a city block to make way for it. The Benson Company,
through its point man, Lewis Shropshire, vigorously opposed design standards that would require their new hotel to be harmonious with
buildings on the east side of downtown. At present there are no design standards and no historic preservation protection for our vital
downtown section.
From the article we learn that a national chain bookstore was
told that people here would never stand for such a company taking
over a whole downtown block, but apparently people looked the
other way when a local company wanted to tear down half a block.
While we all speculate whether our thriving and world-famous
downtown scene can survive rising rents and general gentrification,
one of our own local businesses is wiping out a significant portion
of that scene and thereby demonstiating that anybody else with
the money to do so can tear down more of downtown with
impunity.
We have at present no recourse—legal or governmental—but to
sit by and watch as Edsel Benson and Lewis Shropshire impose
their vision on our downtown. They will construct that vision, iron
ically, right across the street from the Classic Center where a
decade ago local citizens fought a tumultuous battle against a
bland, "modern" design completely out of character with the rest
of downtown, one that would have torn down the old firehall and
replaced it with a neo-shopping mall facade.
That battle was fought against the local government which ulti
mately had to listen to the people it was elected to represent.
The Benson Company has shown time and again that as a cor
poration it does not have to listen to the community, that it can
tear down historic houses for parking lots, that it can close off city
streets for its expansion and that it can raise bland, out-of-char
acter hotel buildings with no consideration given to their impact
on the esthetics and livability of downtown.
In the absence of any legal or governmental avenue of appeal,
I therefore address my petition directly to the Benson Company.
Hey, Edsel: Hey. Lewis: Listen up! You guys can build any kind of
hotel you damn well please. You can (cost considerations allowing)
build a seven-story, windowless block house and write "Keep Out"
on it if you want to, or you can build it out of pink, corrugated
aluminum if you're feeling frisky. Here's hoping that you and your architects will come up with a design that doesn't cost you extra but
will produce a building that tastefully complements what we aiready have downtown, whirh, granted, is already a mixed bag at best,
thanks to previous efforts at modernization.
I'm not telling you how to design your hotel (since you threatened to sue the government for trying to do that), but, shoot, good
design can't cost that much more than bad design, can it? Could I even be so bold as to suggest that at some point in the process you
might have some kind of public meeting to get some input before you start building? I know you're not a government and you don't have
to do that, but, shucks, what you're doing will have a lasting effect on our town, and it would be sort of like good business to acknowl
edge the public in constructing what will be such a public building.
A DISASTER Our friend and colleague Cindy Jerrell lost her home and everything in it to fire Saturday night. She and her husband,
Quinton are coping better than could be expected, and they very much appreciate everybody's expressions of concern.
Pete McCommons
editor@flagpole.com
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VOLUME 14
ISSUE NUMBER 7
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FEBRUARY 16,
2000 FLAGPOLE □