And it deserves to be kept special, genuine. Not cluttered with junk. Not littered with trash. Not made into some fake-spmething like so many of the slums-of-tomorrow that surround us. Not crammed with condos. Not lit up like some tiny Disneyland. Not filled with franchised stores to sell junk food to people so that they cart it home and reheat it insted of cook in their "high-end" appliances. Mass-produced junk looks and tastes the same whether it is served on formica or granite. We have too many people that would salivate to have a row of that crap that was built in Burr Ridge running from the Water Tower to Harlem, andthey would clear the other side to provide parking so we could accommodate the crowds.
FYI - The greater part of Riverside that you see on that General Plan that we are always showing was, of course, never built. The great park that was really more like Central Park was never built. Almost before this place got started, it failed, and most of the lots that Olmsted laid out were split. Because of the Fire in Chicago the carpenters that couldn't build there came here to work, and built some stately homes. The head of the Improvement Company wanted to use the Big Ball Park, which is not so big if you look at the map, as his lot for his home, and had to be dissuaded by argument and economics from doing so. Zoning was then and still should be enacted to protect the many from the few, but lately we are seeing that even after paying lots of dollars for a new zoning code it can rather easily be overcome when the Administration is salivating "to build something."
Go back and sit on that bench and look at what these people allowed to be built downtown. Not just allowed - abetted - with your tax dollars. Perhaps our most important, most visible site and they subsidize and give incentives to get that? Shame on them. Look at than, then look across at the train station, at Central School, at the Water Tower and Well Houses, at all the surrounding structures. Does that fit? Is it beautiful? Elegant? Does it reek of quality? Is it even successful?
Olmsted designed this place to have larger setbacks and smaller, curvilinear roads that were sunken rand had stone gutters so they would not be divisive to the view. He planted artful clumps and groupings that destroyed the boundaries between public and private land. There were to be no fences. These and a hundred more careful details were incorporated into the design.
The CBD was to be a place where the immediate and day-to-day needs of the residents could be obtained. It is only because a few permitted uses were grandfathered for the present owners that you can get your car serviced here anymore. Frank Martin's service station down on Deleplains is now townhouses of dubious merit - and not just to me. Riverside Garage, where I washed cars, pumped gas and learned to fix them for the Henderson Brothers was not slated to remain on the TOD study as new "higher uses" were penciled in. Do you think that there is a single property owner on Burlington, or in the entire CBD for that matter, that doesn't think his property should also be zoned for four stories?
Wouldn't it just be jolly to have a multi-level parking facility on Pine to accommodate the commuter traffic that could access it through the new "western approach" tunnel that is still lurking out there. Why that will make Pine Street a perfect place to zone for four stories for TIF-incentive-ized developers to pack those 100 or 200 condos we were told to build "as soon as you can" in the this-Board-adopted TOD. And while we're at it, we can do Forest too - then we can rent them parking in the new garage. Perfect - except - "Where did Riverside go? You know, that sleepy little place that was right around here somewhere."
"Oh that. They paved it over."
Just like another Board wasn't able to put together a coalition of forces to save the Babson Estate - 28 acres, part still forested, right in our midst with a landmark, world famous home by Louis Sullivan. Offered to the Village for $1. Andthat Board couldn't figure out how to do it - so instead it was sold to a developer who built 15 or 20 similar homes - our first tract development! The same Board did nothing to impede the cutting up and building on the Coonley Estate. Thank God that it finally has the right owners.
I've seen what happens - right here and in dozens of other historical or sensitive/vulnerable places where people who want to "build something" have destroyed what was real and genuine. I can't change the world, or even curtail this trend, but I will resist the ones that try and do it here. Relentlessly. Tenaciously. And for those of you with sufficient gray-matter to understand - that is not negativism. It may not be popular with someone who wants a parking place, right now, right here, or a drive-through whatever so he doesn't have to get out of his car to consume, but it is pro-active positivism. The trees I donate today will never be large enough for me to sit under them and their enjoy their shade in my lifetime, but your kids, and kids not yet born, will be able to do so. So I don't need any lectures from small people that don't have the guts to sign their name to what they write.
Posted Sunday Apr 5, 2009 17:34
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