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Major success: Deaderick Street overhaul.
Overlooked semi-success: The painting of three non-descript stucco buildings (those home to the Hampton Inn and Electronic Express, both on West End Avenue, and that home to the Ramada Inn in the shadows of LP Field). The buildings remain, obviously, architectural insignificant. But a facelift courtesy of some fresh paint has helped a tad. Similarly, the new-look Holiday Inn and McDonald's (both on West End) are nice improvements compared to their previous iterations.
Minimal success and a missed opportunity: TDOT's alteration of Hillsboro Road between I-440 and Graybar Lane. Traffic flows better and a sidewalk segment was added along the east side of the road at Woodmont Boulevard. Retaining walls and bus bench pads look nice and provide some functionality. Still, a full sidewalk spanning the east shoulder of Hillsboro would have been huge. Hundreds of folks live in the apartments and condos along that stretch and could have used a sidewalk to stroll to Green Hills on a nice day. Though acquiring the land for a sidewalk might have been tricky (and expensive), this was a lost opportunity. At the minimum, TDOT should have installed curbs on both sides of Hillsboro.
Painful losses: The quaint old-school building home to Mario's and located in Midtown burned to the ground. Furthermore, the vintage brick buildings along Church Street (catty-corner from the Downtown YMCA) and in the block bordered by Second, Third, Demonbreun and Malloy were demolished. LifeWay owned the former, while Giarratana Development owned the latter. There was a day when downtown and Midtown boasted a sea of cool old buildings. That day is long passed.
As a downtown worker in a building on Deaderick Street, I absolutely love the overhaul and the kiosks. Part of the fun of working downtown is getting out and enjoying the city. Walking up and down this street has become a truly enjoyable experience. By the way, and I don't want to get in on the photos discussion, but the view from both ends of the street are amazing.... if you decide to add some pix.
ReplyDeletecarol, don't you know you can search around on the Internet somewhere and find photos of the Deadrick Street overhaul? Or at least an artist's rendering? Now why would you expect photos to be posted here? When you go to a music blog, do you expect song clips to be posted right there on the blog? Of course not! You sound like a crazy person. Stop floating around in the galaxie with your spacey ideas and come back down to Earth, where photos are not posted on blogs, as God intended.
ReplyDeleteBlogs are man made not God directed. This blog is about visual art, massive visual art. The addition of pix would add to it. Yes, it would add work. I just discovered this blog & am glad to read anther's opinion of our built environment.
ReplyDeleteSo keep talking & growing