Leading Off
1. I always knew the cats would fight back. They’ve been planning this for years. Now, the first attack: a bobcat in Plano mauled a dog.
2. The teardown of that 1959 mid-century modern building may spark changes in Dallas’ demolition process. Which, you know, is fine. I’m all for things we’re all supposed to be for. History is inherently good, all things old are great, let’s honor them, awesome. But I can’t help thinking of Eddie Izzard making fun of us because we “restore” buildings to how they looked 50 years ago, while, meanwhile, Brits have to drive around 400-year-old castles just to get to work. (In other words, if it ain’t even 50 years old yet, is it that big a deal?)
3. Residents may get to vote on what we will rename Industrial Boulevard. I really don’t need to say anything here except “comments are on,” do I? Maybe this: “Let’s keep it clean, Little.” Probably should say that, too.
61 Comments to “Leading Off”
Leave a Reply
All material copyright © 2008 D Magazine. All rights reserved.
Gentleman’s Tan Parkway.
(3) Being that the Trinity project is already way over budget, shouldn’t the city do the naming rights thing? Possibly say, TXU Avenue, or Blockbuster Blvd., and sell rights to the side streets! Belo Street, (deadend: not a through street). etc…
Dime Rock Way.
Will O’the Sewage Ave.
Stenchey Pkwy.
Bigmouth Blvd.
Live Nude Dr.
Only through a tremendous surge of self-control will I stop.
/tremendous surge of self-control/
The surge is working.
Methaddled Ave.
Jim Schutze Memorial Parkway
Highway to Hell
Road To Perdition
Laura Miller Memorial Parkway
Bail Bond Boulevard
One thought: if we tear down all the 50-yr-old buildings, how will any of them ever reach 400 years old?
Now, to the suggestions:
Where the Tollroad Should Be Parkway
Bail Bonds Boulevard
Neumann’s Way, or the Highway
Kayaks and Wonderfulness Road
Leppert Cul de Sac
Big Tex Walk O’Whores
Taint Street
Where the Street Has No Name Blvd.
Well Eric honey,
It can’t get to be 400 years old, if it is torn down before it is 50 years old????
This town used to be full of beautiful Victorian homes…. most were torn down between 1900 and 1950…
Now, there are only a few left in State Thomas, East Dallas, and Oak Cliff…. BUT only a few…..
The people at the time thought they were out of vogue, and since they weren’t that old at the time, well no one thought they were that historic either, THEN.
see, the brits just needed a little forward thinking 350 years ago and they wouldn’t have to worry about driving around those pesky castles.
Cactus Juice Drive
Jailview Avenue
Schutze-and-Leaves Lane
BodyDrop Boulevard
Miller’s Crossing
Sang’s
Folks, I get the basic math. BUT IT WASN’T A CASTLE! It was an ugly office building. On a crappy intersection. Tell you what. I’ll give you 10,000 buildings in the country you can never tear down, because of their historical import, architectural import, or just because they’re real pretty. And then I’ll give each state another 10,000 buildings, just to pretend each state really matters. See if you get to that building. Or one remotely like it. Go.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Butterscotch Stallion Boulevard
Fruntburner Way
Sportatorium Street
Amber Campisi Avenue
John F. Kennedy Drive
OK, seriously not trying to be a smart aleck, but I’ve read Eric’s last comment six times and still don’t understand it.
And Miller’s Crossing should be declared the winner.
OMG,
I thought this Eric Celeste guy was like a real journalist with stuff to do…
I had no idea he would respond with such a defensive response….
You can’t save every building…
but it is pretty ****** to tear down a building on the very day the local paper profiles it on its front page for its historic value…
There are no firm plans in place for the site… so I say a beautiful building that was built by one of Dallas’s premiere architects is better than an empty lot for the next few years…
gosh Eric,
you are one overly sensitive “writer”
I love the way you rip on the castle comment and ignore the broader point about all of the Victorian homes torn down in the early 1900’s…. they were called ugly when they were torn down… wish they were still here too….
this aint what we were promised ave
we got screwed by the man, again ct
put the ore down and watch out for that peterbilt place
Utopia Parkway
Wick Way
V.D. Valley Rd
Trinity Park Way
Metroplex Expressway
Mike Hunt Express
Beaver Boulevard
Mike Lamb Roadway
Michael Warrior blvd
Victorian homes were torn down in Dallas as late as the 1980s. Literally 300-400 of them in the Cedars — to make way for vacant lots where homeless crackheads squat in their wallow.
I offer no policy prescriptions — there was no market for those properties, and they were an onus on their owners. Still, such a loss is hardly to be waved aside dismissively. Now that the area is picking up steam, can you imagine how cool it would be with sculptors and homosexuals restoring old chestnuts and painting them all funky like?
That said, Eric hasn’t weighed in “agin” Victorian homes, merely “indifferent” to Ozzie and Harriet-era dental offices.
That building was one of the ugliest pieces of … that I’ve ever seen. If I had designed it, I would want someone to tear it down. Let’s focus on preserving really important buildings, not this junk.
Amen, comparing that office building to a Victorian style home is a joke.
Just because it’s not the same cookie cutter, overly-adorned crap does not mean it was ugly.
A. We (America) weren’t building anything here 400 years ago. As a country, we are only slightly more than 200 years old.
B. We certainly weren’t building castles and the sort when we started building anything. The closest thing we have is the Vanderbuilt Estate. More like it weren’t built becasue they didn’t want to be identified with the “Old Country”.
C. If we had wanted to keep the tradition of building structures that we wanted to last 400+ years we would have stayed in Europe.
D. We (our anscestors) came to America to start over; build afresh; conquer new horizons, etc, etc. So, why are we going on and on about keeping the past? If you’re so in love with past architecture, then why do you have a microwave oven, A/C, electric lighting, and indoor toilets?
E. We’ll be setting up camp on Mars or Saturn and you folks’ll be complaining it looks so “Space Age”.
The value of a building and the land it sits on is determined by the owner of the property and the RE market.
Facts are that the value of the property in question was in the lot and not the building.
*POOF*
What about being a good neighbor, though? Tearing down a building that may or may not be considered attractive, depending on your subjective tastes in architecture, before you even have any kind of plan approved by the city leaves the possibility of a giant, ugly, gaping hole in the interim - and who knows how long that interim will be?
Unfair Park has an example of that up right now - Fare East, on the corner of Greenville and Milton. The interim there is four years and counting.
Would it not be better to say, “Sorry, you can’t have this demo permit ’til you have your approval from the City Plan Commission?”
Backer, have you ever visited Boston? It seems our forebears demanded structures even before they demanded independence. Three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old buildings are retrofitted ingeniously with the latest crappers you adore. It’s certainly as “American” as Dallas. Most would allow that it’s far, far more attractive (though I prefer Dallas for myriad other reasons).
Retrofitted Crappers would be an awesome name for a band.
Especially if it were a reunion gig/tour.
Bethany: or for Industrial Boulevard-
Retofitted Crap Lane
I’m a big fan of mid-century modern but the city’s opportunity to save the building had already passed. As someone said yesterday, you can’t wait until after someone has spent millions on a property (valued in part based on the potential redevelopment) to designate the building as historic, unless of course you want years of expensive litigation and ultimately, a multimillion dollar judgment or settlement in the developer’s favor.
As to the permit issue, I understand the concern about “gaping holes”, eyesores etc. But a vacant lot is not a hole. Would you have preferred that this alleged architectural treasure stood vacant and neglected for two years while the developer battled the city over zoning changes? Given the building’s proximity to Reverchon Park, it was much more likely to become a homeless squatters den, public bathroom, raccoon habitat or Larry Craig-like cruising location than a vacant lot ever would.
I don’t know. Call me naive, I suppose, but I’d think in the interim, I could possibly pocket a nice, tidy sum of money renting the business space out, which would certainly do more for my bottom line than an empty lot.
But for the record, I agree with Neal. You can’t suddenly look up, notice a building is scheduled for demo, and go “That’s historic!”
I realize there are a lot of structures that fall under Preservation Dallas’ purvey, but perhaps in addition to the city revisiting its demolition process, PD should be looking at exactly how proactive it is, instead of this after-the-fact hand wringing.
Bam! That’s it.
Naive Parkway.
Why not Jailhouse Road?
Crime and Punishment Parkway
Law and Order Lane
Perps’ Peeps Crossing
Bethany - Of course renting is an option but the owner is the party in the best position to make that call. Developers are in business to make money, not to destroy historic buildings out of spite. My guess is that the developer already considered the rental option and perhaps even tried to market the building to prospective tenants.
Under the circumstances it would have been hard to attract a desirable tenant willing to (1) lease the building for an indeterminate period of time (although even if the developer guaranteed occupancy for 1 - 2 years, the prospect of another costly relocation after such a short time would have been daunting to a tenant), and (2) pay rent sufficient to cover the owner’s costs associated with the ongoing operation of the building (such as property taxes, maintenance, utilities, casualty insurance) along with brokerage commissions and legal fees incurred in connection with the lease.
Other questions I haven’t seen addressed: What was the condition of the building prior to demolition? How well-maintained was this 50 year old building? What about the roof - a big concern in flat-roofed buildings? Was the HVAC functional? Was it ADA-compliant? Did it have asbestos, lead paint and other contaminants common to buildings of that age? Did the property comply with EXISTING zoning and building codes? See what I mean? It’s very possible that the owners would have had to spend so much money to bring the building up to a rentable condition (either in the short run or long run in lieu of redevelopment) that profitable ownership would have been impossible. I am sure the purchaser already thought through these issues.
All of this is just a long way of saying that it was a business decision, no more no less, with the added advantage of preventing any further mischief with the historical property designation.
If I say the name should be Road to Perdition, will Max Allan Collin, Sam Mendes, or David Self sue me for tortuous interference?
I guess the whole thing just seemed rather rushed - and I think that’s what so many are reacting to, the knee-jerkishness of it all.
For instance Michael Davis, who is actually on the commission, wrote at length on his blog about it:
http://dallasprogress.blogspot.....-gone.html
What seemed interesting to me was this passage:
Maybe next time it would be nice to take the asbestos and freon out first before they demo the building. And oh yeah, post the demo permit next time. Nicely done.
Hexavalent Chromium Boulevard
- or -
Politiclusterfuck Drive
The working model these days is that it’s ok to ‘err on the side of prudence’ when it comes to ‘protecting children’. Sounds nice on paper when one is between red lights returning to the office listening to ‘The Ticket’. But in the real world, burning down the village to eliminate the roaches that may or may not exist is not only stupid but in any measure unconstitutional. This Neo-American terror of ’someone’ saying ’something’ about ’someone’ about sex and children becoming a flash fire that burns everything within geo radius is to me scarier than Al Qaeda.
There is no proof of the original “anonymous 16 year old” (who called from Colorado(?), no where near the ‘compound’) thus making the entire premise of this case situation suspect on a good day.
I could right now anonymously call the police and report that a 16 year old on my street told me she was being sexually pimped by her Dad and Mother and they would both be in jail and later probably prison, and the remainder of their children seized into custody and farmed out into a nightmare foster ‘care’ system where abuse is probably more rampant than it was at the so-called ‘compound’.
Von Erich Blvd.
Wrasslin’ Way
Lockup Lane
OOOps, My post above (regarding the religious sect seized compound yadayadayada) was meant to post on Trey’s later thread questioning the state’s actions, etc. relevant to the DMN editorial this morning. I apologize that hit posted here in error.
Having dealt extensively with some of the organizations that serve many of the children in foster care, I kind of cringe when I see the word nightmare applied to it, because I think that a) it puts all foster parents under the same umbrella, and b) discourages people who might be very good foster parents from considering the task.
And they’re desperately needed. Just a few years ago, even, I know that children taken into the foster care system were sometimes placed in homes hours away because there were no nearby foster families.
Generalizations, as a whole, tend to make me itch. Including ones about people who live in public housing.
#2 What copnstitutes ‘historical’ worth preserving:
First, Eric et al, for something to get to be ‘400 years old’ (as you say the Brits drive around routinely) something has to remain standing more that 50 years.
That said; BIG Reality Check:
When I bought MY house in 1983, built in 1954, it was 29 years old. It is now 55 years old.
NOW: Do the math. To me, this is a ‘;modern’ house, hardly ‘historical’.
BUT, take the age of this house (55 yrs old) and deduct 55 yrs. from the year 1983 when I bought it. In 1983, a house built in 1928 was indeed considered historical. (So how old does that make you feel?)
I helped fight in the late 70s to see that another round of 50ish homes and buildings were not raised, otherwise protected in my then neighborhood: Volia! The Swiss Avenue district now widely admired but almost leveled when they were ‘only’ 50 years old.
wait a minute. it’s okay to say “politiclusterfuck”?
Farfrummuvin
Sekt Drive
#3:(Re: Industrial Blvd. New Name.)
Channeling wicked Wick here:
SCHUTZE HUNT ROW
It just chaps me that the owners and the demolition company rush in to tear the building down knowing full well that the worst will happen is that someone will wag their finger at them. They could give a flip about the ordinances they’re breaking. They know nothing’s gonna happen.
I’d just settle for having the owner of the demolition company staked out naked on the site for three days and nights. Oh, and poor some honey on the bastard to attract the critters and the varmints. I promise to weep false tears when Channel 11 interviews him in his hospital room.
Geez. Did you just wish death (or close to it) on someone? That’ll come back to bite you. Take it easy, ok.
Eeeeesh…isn’t that a little harsh? In the grand scheme of things, we don’t even know of the Texas Historical Commission would’ve agreed that it was indeed historic. At this juncture - hand-wringing and verklempting aside - it was a 50-year-old office building of indeterminate architectural value.
Have we even heard from the HKS folks? You’d think they’d have something to say by now about their founder’s work being torn down if it was a sterling example of it, yes?
Riverside Dr.
I wished death on someone once, and then they died. Cool. I have powers.
Call it Preston Blvd and RE values will magically rise. It may not have shared the cattle trail history of Preston Rd, but at least the Longhorn Ballroom was there for a time. Plus there have certainly been plenty of cattle trail byproducts along the route…hookers, jails, bars, etc.