Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Robot
Absolutely nothing was done? That is patently false. A number of preservationists, including the city of Phoenix themselves tried to save the building or have it put on the historic register. It was very nearly the Arizona Opera: http://archive.azcentral.com/busines...cords0729.html
Ultimately the former property owners chose profit over preservation. They had the sole power to preserve the building with a historic designation, and after a great deal of effort, chose not to. Since the building was already zoned for a high-rise, it held far more financial value to them as land. The asking price was set to only sustain a high-rise development.
The property owners were entitled to do what they did, but to say no effort was made to preserve the building is outrageous. I'm glad at least some portion will remain. |
The Arizona Opera deal was attempted in 2010 by the City of Phoenix and it didn't even specifically have to be the Stewart Building, just any building to consolidate the Arizona Opera's offices. I was referring to people who did nothing to get historical status adopted for the building after the the Singers withdrew the original application in 2004. The City tried to get them to change their minds, but obviously they didn't. As far as I know nothing else was done by anyone after that to get the building
protected in any way. The music store closed in 2010 and aside from the Arizona Opera talk, nothing else happened after that except for the building falling into disrepair and becoming a place for the homeless to hang out. If I'm wrong please provide your sources. Had that historical designation happened the current developer would have had a much tougher time knocking it down, which was my original point. I also never said that absolutely nothing was done or that no effort was made to preserve the building. The entire sentence was: "absolutely nothing was done to get this building designated as something special or interesting. Or if it was, it was at the last minute." And as far as I know, aside from the half-hearted attempt back in 2004 to get the Singers to go through with their application, nothing was done to protect its historical status or get it listed as being in an historic district, until the current developer disclosed their plans. So, one attempt 13 years ago, to get historic status is not a great deal of effort in my book.
Once the Singers sold the property, the focus should then have been on getting the new owner/developer to preserve the building which brings us to where we are now. On the previous page of this thread in post #268, I blamed the developer for causing the problem in the 1st place by jumping the gun on demolition. They did go back to the drawing board and met with the RAA to see what could be done with the remaining portion, but since the GPLET was basically dead by that point they went ahead and did what they were allowed to do by permit. To my knowledge, there was no pressure put on the City by anyone to deny those permits unless the building or portions of it were preserved for adaptive reuse. Preserving the building might have been a condition of the GPLET, but not a condition of the permits and so the developer, putting profit ahead of preservation *GASP* did what should surprise no one. And as I said in my previous post, but which you left out: "At any rate, the developer is keeping the circular part of the original building and part of the wall along Central which is more than they have to". And from what others on this thread have noted, it looks like that's very close to what Empire agreed to in the redesign. So it seems that we're basically getting what many wanted in the first place which is preservation and integration of the distinctive portions of the original building as well as the Stewart name, but of course that will never be enough for some people.
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