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Originally Posted by UrbanRevival
Ugh. Why does demolition have to be immediately presumed as the "only" option?
Are the buildings structurally unsound? Has the developer even considered a rehab/overbuild with the existing structures? Have they put any money into an engineering study? How would a developer even be held liable to reconstruct a building as promised?
I'm not trying to be "flip" off the bat. I do love the idea of invigorating corners like this across the city, but there has to be a middle ground. I detest when demolition is the first suggestion by a developer, especially given so many recent boondoggles involving demolition.
Philadelphia has to be so much smarter than to continually allow these scenarios to play out. At least the article suggests that someone has an iota of awareness.
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Generally speaking I like to preserve historic buildings, but I'm not dogmatic and context matters. And in this case, I think the context of the current state of the building matters. This is what the building looks like today:
Now I know this building is very old and that it has a lot of great history; it was once the home of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph and it was once a very handsome building. But clearly those glory days have long... long... long faded.
This isn't a case of a building needed some sprucing up. It has been irreparably altered. The original façade was destroyed when the street was widened. The current 1896 façade is basically completely destroyed. Multiple floors have been removed. At this point, if someone wanted to "repair" this façade how would one even go about doing so? And in the end, how much more original would the repaired façade be as compared to the rebuilt one that they're proposing?
There is no reason to preserve this building. Them knocking this building down and trying their best to approximate what this building looked like in it's glory days sounds like a fine solution.
So yea, completely fine with knocking it over and rebuilding. But on a separate note, they need to go back to the drawing board on the overbuild. Looks like shit. But conceptually this seems like a great project.