Comment 64277

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted May 30, 2011 at 23:45:10 in reply to Comment 64223

"The urban renewal plan for the downtown area as submitted by Murray Jones, called for acquisition and total clearance of almost forty-four acres of land in the central core of the city, adjacent to the new city hall, Gore Park and the main business and commercial districts - a choice piece of property having ready access by public and private transportation as well as high concentrations of pedestrian traffic generated by nearby high-rise apartments, offices and shopping ares. Jones' economic study of this area claimed it had become obselete and inefficient. Eighty-two percent of the buildings were built before 1900, and tax revenue from the area was very low. Altogether there were some 260 businesses with 500 people living in apartments over the stores. Some of the businesses, like Eatons, were large and prosperous, but the vast majority were small merchants and manufacturing firms that eked out a marginal existence." - Their Town, Bill Freeman and Marsha Hewitt.

This process started in 1964, and work began on "Civic Square" in 1967. By 1970, it had been turned over to Yale Properties from First Wentworth, a Pigott subsisidiary.

They tore a hole in downtown. By the seventies, it had already consumed a large chunk of the core and over the next few decades it devoured many more. Many of the brilliant initial plans didn't come to pass (like outdoor pedestrian malls), and others just didn't work out. But all this rhetoric about downtown being in need of big redevelopment projects is downright ancient.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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