There Goes The Canyon

One of the reasons I love working downtown is because of buildings—there lots of older building, great architecture and “sky scrapers” as big as you can get in a city this size. We had our own little “canyon” as I have heard downtowns described on TV. True it’s a mini-canyon but it was my mini canyon and love it. Well, a portion of my canyon is going away. The talk of local news, all week long, is how the local church—who is a major power base in this community has developed a massive plan to build a “ new downtown”. The Church is going to bring down a couple of the older building to make room for the construction. The result will be an “open down town”. The initial artist conceptions have been warmly embraced by the community. Lots of green space, airy walkways and possibilities. This is what the people want it sound like but not me.

I am afraid that each new downtown remodel will have more and more “open space” sun light coming in all times of the day and flowers everywhere. The romance will be gone. The tall turn of the century buildings, with the “gingerbread” moldings, gargoyles and faces sculpted into the properties. The sidewalk spaces where one can have coffee in the late morning and not have to block the sun for your eyes because the building did that for you. In winter when the dark comes early the light from the windows seemed to welcome me as I sped through the city streets heading for the train. I love sitting out side the building looking up and seeing snippets of building life through the windows as workers continue to labor into the early evening. Each downtown building seems to dress up differently for the holidays season, lights, signs and huge trees on the tops lit up celebrating the season. I will also miss the “secrete” restaurants, diners and coffee shops hidden in the bowels of many of the buildings. Sure the is supposed to be new restaurants and eateries when the new space is built but the items will be priced out of reach for the casual dining experience. The mom and pops and one of akinds will be gone. Chains and high ends will replace the old guard.

I hate progress if progress means loosing the flavor of the city. I am suspicious too. I wonder if this “renewal” is similar to what happened in New Orleans is this rebuilding just a way to move the lower income an no income folk out of the Downtown area. I would not be surprised if this were the case. You know there is a great fault line which runs through this city. A great fault whicis supposed to slip one of these days. The geologists say the slip is past do and the results will be catastrophic in trauma similar to N.O. but our population is far less. So, until then I uses the city will just do the rebuild and slowly my canyon will go.