Quote:
Originally Posted by ReginaGuy
I don't get it. Whats the importance of saving this boarded up crack house?
I thought I'd never say it, but that lot would look better as a parking lot. At least people don't look at parking lots and immediately lock the doors in their car
or are you guys talking about a different building?
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No, that's the one.
Part of it, to be fair, is that this is a very old building, even for Winnipeg which is old for the west. So it does have some historic value. I think it's one of the older extant buildings in the city.
Part of it, is that in general, folks on these boards hate the concept of anyone driving a car into downtown for work (or seemingly any other use). I've never seen such raw hatred towards parking as I have here - and it's not just surface lots. Parkades get the same eggs thrown at them. It's simply a pure, unadulterated hate on cars.
And of course, part of it is the mentality that has resulted in a boarded up Portage Avenue in many places, and the continued decay of Main Street - you cannot tear anything down in Winnipeg, ever. There's a protectionist, anti-progress streak running through some people that's positively frightening. This is changing, but there are still some hangers-on to the philosphy of "EVERYTHING is a heritage building and I'll chain myself around it to save it, by god!".
You're seeing the results here - full acknowledgement of the use of parking in the area, and yet the demand for more parking is just inconceivable to some people. It's a very strange sort of doublethink.
Personally, I think it's too bad that this house wasn't saved decades ago, before it turned into the piece of crap that it seems to be today. Perhaps the interior is nicer, and a good restoration would help, but yeah - I don't see what there is to "protect" here anymore. This is a bit of hyperbole, because I don't really think this building is THAT bad (it's just an eyesore), but there are many occasions where parking lots are better than the alternative. Calgary had a pretty good ghetto area that's now been razed and is temporarily gravel parking lots, and I'll tell ya - it's 2000x better that it was before. Even with some old shitty early 20th century squatter houses (some claimed they were "heritage" buildings) gone.