As some of you know, I used to blog about density issues in Ann Arbor. After a while, it got a little monotonous because the opposition to any new project was completely predictable. You could play NIMBY Bingo:
- It’s “luxury” housing that will be out of reach for most neighborhood residents.
- It’s going to contribute to the homogenization of America, where every place looks the same.
- Donald Trump. (The anti-density equivalent of Godwin, this is equally effective whether or not Donald Trump is in any way connected with the proposed building.)
And so on.
Christopher Hitchens manages to hit on all these points and more in his Vanity Fair essay Last Call, Bohemia opposing the redevelopment of St. Vincent’s hospital in Greenwich Village:
The inaugural plans featured on one flank a vast new medical building of half a million square feet, standing 329 feet tall and 288 feet wide, and on the other flank a Rudin condo tower of luxury apartments, also consisting of half a million square feet … [They] look like a plan made by Donald Trump’s people on an especially uninspired day.
[O]n the day when everywhere looks like everywhere else we shall all be very much impoverished, and not only that but — more impoverishingly still — we will be unable to express or even understand or depict what we have lost.
The preservation group Hitchens links to uses exactly the same language as its Ann Arbor counterparts. The proposed development is “massive.” It’s “too tall, too dense and completely out of character with the Historic District.” It’s “out of scale with the surrounding area.” At least they didn’t complain that it makes it too hard to see the Michigan “M”.
Sure, labor unions support the new hospital because it will bring in a Level 1 trauma center and lots of jobs. Nearby public housing residents do too; it’s their nearest hospital. But what are the complaints of a few construction workers and low-income project dwellers compared to the outré glamour of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Bob Dylan and the Beats?
Young Urban Amateur | 20-Jun-08 at 11:13 am | Permalink
I’m not sure I have a dog in this fight, but I felt like pointing out that while Hitchens describes the current building as “a raw box in the Brutalist style” and says that “the intersection of Greenwich and Seventh and 11th to 13th Streets has been slightly scarred by an inconsiderately ugly, if unobtrusive, division of St. Vincent’s Hospital”, the preservationist website gushes the following about the building:
“As the Landmarks Commissioners have already stated, the O’Toole Building is a striking example of modernistic architecture within the Greenwich Village Historic District and is an important landmark in its own right. In addition, in its low-rise configuration, it is an integral part of the fabric of the Historic District, providing a transition from the taller structures to the north and an elevated plaza of light and air between 12th and 13th Streets. If the O’Toole Building were demolished, these critical features would be lost to the Historic District and future generations. The Commission must do everything within its power to preserve the O’Toole Building.”
Wow! Let’s hear it for Brutalist architecture, I guess. (Actually, IMO, while the O’Toole building is indeed ugly, it is not Brutalist.)
Young Urban Amateur | 20-Jun-08 at 11:49 am | Permalink
I’m sorry, I do need to rant about this some more. Hitchens is getting up-in-arms about the increased height on two lots…but *ignoring* the fact that the plan also calls for the *tearing-down* of several multi-story buildings to be replaced by small 3-4 story townhouses??? So, is small beautiful, or not?
a) if he’s a preservationist, he has his priorities totally screwed-up, since the architecture of the buildings to be torn down is well-worth preserving
b) if he’s anti-height, then he’s also totally screwed up, since this plan would actually create *more* unimpeded views and unblocked light
c) the plan for the O’Toole site itself is actually the least objectionable aspect, since it would create a tower that is significantly set back from the street, save only at the two points on the semi-ellipse.
Or maybe all the sick people in the Village can just to to Midtown for treatment. Or Wall Street.
But there I go ranting about someplace I don’t even live. What do I know.
Young Urban Amateur | 20-Jun-08 at 11:52 am | Permalink
Re: a). Point being that Hitchens totally fails to defend the architecture of the residential buildings on W. 11th and 12th to be torn down.
g | 20-Jun-08 at 1:36 pm | Permalink
Don’t forget “Manhattanization.” As if a tall building here or there are going to magically turn everyone in the neighborhood into investment banking a-holes.
Young Urban Amateur | 20-Jun-08 at 2:20 pm | Permalink
All I know is, I’m going to start refering to South U. in Ann Arbor as “an elevated plaza of light and air”.