The Cognitive Dissonance Of Demolition
Building to be demolished at Main and Van Buren. Image from Google Street View
Demolition ahead
Link (NS)
“Revitalizing downtown is the goal of promoters of Harrison Square and a host of potential projects under discussion. The city’s oldest hospital, St. Joseph, at Broadway and West Main Street, is doing its part to expand services, educate resident doctors and even add a new green space to the area. Demolition of a 1952 building at West Main and Van Buren streets on the hospital’s campus is to begin soon, with preparations already in place that have closed a block of Van Buren, just west of the hospital, and the two east-bound lanes of Main Street. ”
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“The building being torn down was once a convent for nuns and was later converted into office space. It has sat unused for a decade. When landscaping is completed in the spring, plans call for a picnic area for employees and guests.”
What the heck does tearing down a good urban building (multi-story, built to the curb) have to do with Harrison Square?
Demolishing urban buildings does nothing to revitalize downtown. It only serves to create more “missing teeth” for a downtown that looks like it’s been through it’s share of bar brawls.
It’s very troubling if the line is going to be that destruction is the path to progress. We’ve already been down that path (starting a half century ago) and it’s a big part of the reason for the current push to redevelop the holes that were created.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Related:
Another Downtown Building Falls (AFW)
If they create green space there, plant some trees, etc… I don’t think it will be that bad. Kinda like the Courthouse. If the building has no tenant and nothing is being done with it in the near future then it really serves no purpose. Now if they are tearing down this building to make room for a parking lot, or free standing fast food joint, then I would be a little ticked.
Oh no. Not again. It’s like people are looking for excuses to demolish stuff.
Making that area a “green space” is illogical. It’s located on a busy street – who in the world would want to eat lunch outside and get gawk at by the cars sitting at that particular light. Yeh – noone.
I found some more information on the building in one of my books. Let me post it – be back in a minute.
From John Ankenbruck’s Twentieth Century History of Fort Wayne (1975) – pages 513 and 514
St. Joseph Hospital’s largest expansion program, the building of the main Broadway wing, was completed with dedication ceremonies on May 1, 1966. The $6 million improvement was initiated by a fund drive which began in 1960. A new nine-story building along Broadway to replace the old 1912 structure at the location and a four story wing on Van Buren St. plus a convent structure at Van Buren and Main St., were basic constructural elements. Including modernization of the Berry St. wing, the project boosted St. Joseph’s capacity to 400 beds and 60 bassinets. Sister M. Odillia, administrator during the planning stage, said a public subscription campaign and federal funds would finance the improvement.
The chapel and motherhouse built in 1881, were razed to make way for construction completed in 1966. Hospital buildings erected in 1892 and 1912 were also razed. The main Berry St. wing, built in 1928 and 1929, remained but the entrance was closed off and the interior modernized, with the top floor of the seven-story building a surgical center. The new entry way, facing Broadway, was at the center of the nine-story wing and serviced by a driveway and a canopy.
P.S. – here’s a view of the hospital before the construction – I’m directionally challenged :) so I couldn’t tell you how to match up present day with this picture…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristinafh/2415486462/
and here’s a really really old view of it
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristinafh/2657174482/
I believe the first photo is a view of the Berry Street side, with Broadway on the rght. The building whose corner can barely be seen on the left side of the photo is the former nurses’ home, which still stands on the east side of Van Buren at Berry. From the cars in the parking lot, I’d guess the photo is late 1950s, possibly 1960.
The older photo, going by the location of the streetcar tracks, is looking southwest at the corner of Main and Broadway. Streetcars ran on those streets but not on Van Buren or Berry. Broadway is on the left and Main is on the right. The photo is sometime between 1892 and the very first few years of the 20th century, because there’s catenary (trolley wires) above the streetcar tracks and no motorcars are on the street. The streetcars were pulled by mules prior to 1892, and by 1910 there were enough automobiles around that most photos on the street would show a at least a few.
I don’t know Kristina, you bring up good points. But I still feel if a building is old, unused, and is just going to remain unused for decades, it is better to take it down and put some green space there or something else that would serve the community better. Like I said I would be very much against replacing it with something like asphalt parking or a stand alone fast food joint. I would rather have green space around our downtown than dilapidated buildings being left just because they COULD be used at some point in the future which none of us can predict. FW becoming similar to downtown Detroit is not a desirable future.
Joe S Tearing down the buildings will make it more similar to Detroit. They tore down many buildings as unfortunately did most American cities and when they come down it often takes decades for them to be replaced. Here in Milwaukee we had a corner parking lot on a busy street (Water St) that sat vacant for 40 years. This is just one example and I’m sure hundreds could be found. Tearing buildings down just destroys the urban fabric. So the author is right this is most likely not a good plan.
It costs a lot of money to take a building down as well. In some cases there is good tax revenue coming out of a building as well.
or actually the property it sits on…
Playing devil’s advocate here, what would you suggest be done with this building if graffiti takes it over, windows become broken, it becomes a location for drug deals to be carried out…etc. I bring up Detroit earlier because there is many buildings like this there.
According to the article it’s already been vacant for a decade and I don’t see any graffiti or broken windows. If I wanted to be facetious I could say that it’s already part of the drug trade since it’s part of a hospital campus…
Joe S Tearing it down has potential criminal impacts as well… i.e. surface parking lots are popular places for robberies and muggings.
But more likely you go after the property owner if it falls into disrepair and if the city now owns the lot they need to consider a TIF or selling it for $1 to a developer, with an agreement that the property will either be redeveloped or if it is torn down that the proposed building that would replace it is actually built. Well that is how I’d attempt it.
What about using it for educational purposes? Much like what they did for Science Central? There’s SO much that could be done with that space which could be a win-win for everyone – St. Joe, City of Fort Wayne, the general community….
Joe – putting green space where that building is – makes absolutely no sense. It’s a major thoroughfare (well, in terms of city streets).
Medicine and health – look how important that is to our entire society. Here you have a building that is part of a major hospital campus. SO many opportunities. Again – I’ll say it – Science Central. How long did that building stay empty? I’m unclear because it was put together after I had moved south for my master’s degree.
Just think of the programs for kids and adults – nutrition classes…fun things about how the body works. Someone correct me if I’m wrong – but didn’t Parkview BUY St. Joe? And so with Parkview BUYING the rights to the baseball stadium, and claiming that it is going to do their part to make people healthier (which I’m still struggling to understand how naming rights = being more proactive in making peoples lives healthier)….this building is just a hop away from the FRICKIN’ STADIUM.
At this rate, I will never want to move back to Fort Wayne. It will look like every other non-descript, over-paved, generic city. (sigh).
Much has already been said, but I just want to respond to Joe’s false dichotomy: “…what would you suggest be done with this building if graffiti takes it over, windows become broken, it becomes a location for drug deals to be carried out…etc.”
That’s like saying, as many people do, that if a couple fights all the time and no longer loves each other, it’s better to divorce than stay married, especially if children are privy to the discord. The problem is they only acknowledge two options, when really there’s a third one that should be embraced, mainly, stop fighting and commit to love each other again. They say, oh no, that’s not possible. I say, oh yes, it is! Harder, perhaps, than ending it quickly. But very possible.
Likewise, razing this building or allowing it to succumb to blight are NOT the only options. There’s a third option: adapting it for re-use. Sure, might be a little harder in the short term. But like a saved marriage, infinitely better in the long.
And just a curiosity, didn’t St. Joe just build new space because they had outgrown current facilities? And this space has been empty for all this time? I don’t quite understand. Seems a little like St. Joe built new space they might not have needed in a public “green space” (the former Berry Street Promenade) that was ten times better than the one they now propose to replace that which they took away in the first place. Am I off here?
I agree with Scott! Why did St. Joe spend all that money on new offices around the corner? Easy Doctors whom control the Hospital didn’t want to work out of rehabbed buildings….They want new and shiny!
Or, Scott & Mark – Is it possible that the health-care system in our country has become “uncontrollable”? Possible causes: – Government is taking over, so why fight to control costs? ; Third-party pays most of cost – so why contol costs? ; health-care has become a “cash cow”? ; Non-profit health-care systems (read Parkview) must??? compete with for-profits – so all costs go up? : Non-profits make so much over expenses that they HAVE to name unneeded baseball stadiums at a $3 million cost,and call it “advertizing”? ; In-city non-profit hospital needs to more outside the city so as to reduce operating costs so they can generate more “income over expense” so they can “give ????” more to area monitary needs (but only to those approved by it’s board – like an unneccessary new basweball stadium?
Or is it just the “elite” telling the taxpayers and health-care users, “Don’t question us – WE know what’s best for you!!!!! If WE decide to tear down a building, WE know why!! You should just shut up and pay for yOUR benefit!!!
There’s definitely some wires crossed here in the communication between actions and words on St. Joe’s part. I don’t think though, that they would have just thrown up another building because they wanted something shiny and new. That seems like an awful lot of administrivia and money just for “shiny”.
But I want to divert things a little bit here.
I skimmed through the downtown studies that were done (I think starting in 2005?) and this is what I’m confused about. Within the study and the proposed improvements, areas like the campuses of St. Joe Hospital and Lincoln Life were mentioned (along with a handful of others) as integral parts of “the plan”.
SO – I guess – what I’m confused about – this Downtown Improvement plan – who is managing it? Was it agreed to by anyone or is merely a bunch of consultant white papers that are sitting on a shelf somewhere?
And I’m saying that because one would think that before anything – and I mean ANYTHING was altered in the core of the downtown area – regardless of the reason why – there would be some review by some citizen board/governmental board so that somebody could do checks and balances on the official downtown improvement plan.
I realize this building isn’t historical but reality is, it’s not being demolished in the name of improvement. It’s being demolished for other reasons – like maybe they don’t want to pay taxes on a non-income generating building.
So when – oh – Fort Wayne Newspapers, wants to tear down their building (and it doesn’t fall into the historical category) – do they just get to?
Or if Wendy’s downtown wanted to sell its building to folks running a tattoo parlor or a “dash for cash” – does that really mesh with the “downtown improvement” process?
Someone educate me here, k?
Sad, my oldest son was born in that building. It doesn’t seem that I’m old enough to see community buildings that have significance for me disappear.
From the stridency of a lot of the protest comments, I speculate that the commenters think a very large part of the hospital is being demolished, and from what I’ve read and what I can see, that’s not the case. What’s coming down is a comparatively small annex of nondescript style and marginal structural quality right at the intersection of Van Buren and Main. It doesn’t look as if it would lend itself well to adaptive reuse, as it’s not well-connected to the rest of the medical facility. I wonder if all the protest and anguish is based on a full understanding of what’s being done.
The original intent of the post was not to save the building as I considered that a foregone conclusion.
What troubled me was the rhetoric and the dangerous thinking therein that purports to equate destruction with progress, when history shows it not to be the case (i.e. “urban renewal”).
The line about Harrison Square was really the impetus for the whole post and the basis of my ire. Just because something happens downtown doesn’t mean it’s related to Harrison Square and it certainly doesn’t mean that whatever is happening is good or beneficial simply because it happens within the geographic sphere of downtown.
It’s possible to do real harm downtown, especially with how far off track we’ve become with regards to implementing good, traditional urbanism.
Harrison Square isn’t something you can pour over your project like a salve in order to make it jive.
And I’ll second Scott’s thoughts. In addition, I’m asking a bigger picture question which no one seems to be able to answer.
Who is managing this downtown blueprint and is it okay for any business to do whatever it wants – regardless of how it fits into this overall “PLAN”. I’m just waiting for a couple more holes to be put into Fort Wayne downtown – random events like this – because there doesn’t seem to be any rallying around and governance of the bigger picture.
So basically – downtown Fort Wayne gets what it gets. More random.
BTW – I found an older article done by one of the FW newspapers regarding downtown. If I find it – I’ll send it over to Scott for posting…..It’s great insight (in my opinion) of why downtown improvement never takes formation.
Kristina – Just a little correction – It was the owners of the Lutheran Health Network that bought St. Joe, not Parkview. St. Joe does have a significant autonomy on the part of it’s administration.
As to your question on who is to be managing the downtown improvement, it is the Downtown Development District Board. What authority they have is a good question which someone on that board would have to answer. Their operating budget for 2009 was just recently passed by our city common council in December.