CAR agenda includes demolition on 20th Street

I went down and looked at the 202 North 20th Street demo, and it’s an old warehouse, seemed not used, so I have no problem with that demolition. I am a little curious about what is planned for the location – more apartments / condos that are too big, too tall?

As to 2710 East Franklin, I’m also curious about that, but am assuming that the ‘garage’ is actually a carriage house that they want to add. I know that house and the back yard is really long, so if they get approval for an extension on the back, it can easily fit in the yard. There are no windows in the back of the building, as I recall, so it might be fairly easy to add on the back. As long as they don’t try to add something weird with a roof like the ‘Reserve’ (the condos on 25th at Franklin), I would hope it would fit in.

My fear is that the CAR would tell them to make it look modern, to differentiate from the original building – and then it could get hideous. That seems to be the problem with the current CAR – they keep approving things that, to me, look hideous – but they claim that they have to differentiate from the older buildings. My opinion is that they’ve approved a bunch of buildings that are ugly to look at now, and will be ugly in another fifty or hundred years from now. Again, just my opinion – of the new condos and/or apartments that wrap around the McD’s, and the ones at 21st and Broad, and the most ugly ones down at 21st and Main Streets, which just seem to keep on getting worse as they add on to it.

Talked to Eddie Slipek the other night, he seems to think that the ones at 21st and Broad are the most offensive (as he talked about in his review in Style Mag), but IMHO the stuff at 21st and Main is much worse.