How much sense does it make to have empty buildings in a land where there are so many homeless?
Here’s one theory: Money. Not necessarily how much, but WHO gets it. If you renovate a building, the real estate companies, lumber yards, building contractors and city governments get less or no money. A new building requires lots of new permits, land, building materials and wages. A renovation requires much less.
Some old sites contain contaminations of one ilk or another; some are simply dangerous physically and some would require extensive, expensive renovation to bring them “up to code” according to the various governing bodies. A goodly bit of it is for our own protection but isn’t there a fuzzy line in there somewhere? Is there a line where the code is intended to stifle any renovation and require a new building instead?
We seem to tolerate these expanses of graffiti canvas, these blighted rows of “look the other way” and these neglected jobs for “George” and condone instead the blocky monstrosities of today’s modern architecture. You have to drive a little further to get a box of crackers but look at that big parking lot! (Joni Mitchell comes to mind.)
And so the old building stands there: Too expensive to renovate, and too expensive to tear down. The property owners use it for tax write-off or simply let the city government absorb it. Money.
I know, I know. There is a boatload of “what if” for every situation and there certainly is no grand solution for any of this. I don’t propose that my mind is big enough to develop any sort of solution. It’s just an observation. Sometimes I just need an explanation.
There are too many of these.
Oh, yes. There is an alley between them but I thought the photo was too wide so I moved the buildings closer together.
|
----------------------------------------------
|
|   The Profile
(more than you
really
wanted to know)
is here.
|
|
|
|
Labels: abandoned, Commanche, Oklahoma, Old Buildings
