Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
Regarding your points, I guess in a fit of naivete, I felt that the Schmidtville people were being genuine, and didn't consider that they might have motives other than to preserve those Victorians, which are disappearing bit by bit in our city.
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This is a key point, and I too was a bit dismissive of the Schmidtville people, simply because I feel like their fixation is building height--which doesn't bother me--even as much larger heritage issues are going un-addressed. But it's true that the proposal in question will involve tearing down four perfectly good Victorians.
It looks, to casual observers, as if we have loads and loads and loads of these old wood-framed structures, but really, we don't. All it takes is one development to wipe out a half block of them, and the ones that really comprise the visible Victorian character of the South End are on stretches of just a few blocks on streets like South, Inglis, Queen, etc. Many are owned in large parcels by companies that rent them out, putting them at greater danger than a stretch of owner-occupied buildings (which tend to be pretty safe from demolition). When I moved here 18 months ago, I would've assumed that these high-visibility Victorian streetscapes would be safe from demolition--developers wouldn't dare propose large-scale demolition of these blocks, city council wouldn't permit it, and citizens wouldn't stand for it. That assumption was based on the norms of every other city I've lived in.
Having seen what's happening with the Doyle Block and the heritage buildings on Barrington, I don't think that at all. Nothing is safe, except maybe federally registered properties, because this place is outrageously retrograde on these issues, to a degree I find totally unfathomable.
There are still so many parking lots, three-storey 1960s apartment boxes, and
this kind of cheap garbage, and yet we're still knocking down the best-quality architecture in the city.
We have a chance with this development boom to urbanize the city further, and create great new architecture side-by-side with the great architecture of the past. To some degree, that's happening, but there's way too much haphazard development and demolition happening as well. We're really running the risk of ruining a civic character two centuries in the making, in large part because we seem to be in thrall to a juvenile, "let's be open for business" notion that our development community are benevolent city builders, and we should leave them alone to do their business without interference--as if this is how great cities are built.