First, however, whoever made the comment on the previous thread about New York City buses was making a perfectly legitimate point, until he/she added at the end: “Idiot.” Make your points, stow the insults. Now the whole comment is gone. I’m cracking down on incivility. Too many readers have told me: “I’d like to comment, but I’m afraid of the attacks from the mean readers.”
Last week I took a walk from the Observer building at 600 South Tryon up to The Square to see what’s new. I noted the site of the historic Jack Wood store is STILL undeveloped. Two very nice historic Tryon storefronts, plus a small-scale collection of historic buildings known as Film Row on Church Street, were torn down in 1998. Because of some clumsy computer stuff I can’t link here to a couple of columns I wrote at the time, but the words “civic vandalism” were used.
Notice, that was 10 YEARS AGO! What’s there now? A surface parking lot, and a fancy-schmancy sign. In other words, developers haven’t yet succeeded in putting together a buildable project there. For a full decade Tryon Street has been deprived of some graceful storefronts it could badly need.
Reminds me, again, how lame Charlotte’s development laws are at protecting older buildings. Those buildings should never have been demolished until building permits were in place for what was to replace them, or at a minimum until a developer got the replacement project rezoned.
Other cities’ politicians have spines, or even a moderate interest, in protecting historic buildings. Charlotte’s elected officials don’t seem to care. Nor have city planners proposed much of anything to strengthen the situation, unless that happened in the past 10 months. If they did, someone please let me know.
Another huge change: I took the bus to work today. It was so full people were standing. A nice young man even got up to offer me his seat! This is a huge turnaround from even a year ago. I know $4-a-gallon gas hurts many people’s budgets and is a drag on the economy, but it’s also a good way to get people to change transportation habits — and that’s a real important tool in the fight against global climate change. After a year using Boston’s excellent public transportation system I know I’ll be using CATS a lot more.