The Power-Brokers of Asheville are at work again,

[G_j]

Save the Basilica on YOUTUBE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95F8l1_b-M&feature=channel_page


Imagine St. Lawrence Park!

The Power-Brokers of Asheville are at work again.

If you thought the only indignities left to tarnish the most important building remaining in the city consist of graffiti, traffic, bad condo design, and poor sanitation, take a look at the Chamber of Commerce's out-sized hotel under construction just down the street from the world-famous architecture of the Basilica of St. Lawrence.

How could any alert City Council allow such a treasure to be tarnished by the foolishness of approving a thirteen story, undistinguished hotel to be erected just down the street, literally a rose stabbed by a thorn?

Now pressures build to make the same mistake again, this time with a Grade-C motel (the last design called for a colored-brick façade) just across the street, once again flinging trash at Rafael Guastavino's masterpiece.

It couldn't happen, you ask, they couldn't be pressured into making the same mistake again?

Remember the great magnolia across from City Hall; remember that we were one of the few cities that gloried in a living green meadow across from that award-winning city hall?

Now that same city hall faces a sea of concrete including a bevy of faux Greek columns ending in just another salute to American bad taste in action; remember that the Thomas Wolfe historical site house is now dwarfed by the neighboring condo hence vanishing in the shadow of a glittering too big (it led to the rumor that attendance is down at My Old Kentucky Home because of waning national interest in Thomas Wolfe).

The Basilica remains the single most important building in the city and should be treated with care and concern.

A grade-C motel brings in little money but the visitors to the Basilica would continue to be responsible for uncounted treasures to the coffers of Asheville.

Don't allow this artistic treasure to be destroyed, instead finance a park dedicated to what's left of Asheville's architectural history, and a salute to the trees cut down across from City Hall.

-Peter Loewer, The Wild Gardener

http://www.ashevilleparc.org/

Imagine St. Lawrence Park
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[jeremyfive]

1. Better City Planning in Asheville, Please!

It is horrifying to see the highrise hotel in Biltmore Village these days--so close to historic structures and the very railway the Vanderbilts used for travel.

Can we not do more to preserve the history of Asheville, and let the largers hotels etc. build a little farther out?

If we don't, the "Paris of the South" will become the South Bronx of the hills.

[supernova]

2. Welcome to DU jeremyfive!

:hi:

:D

Welcome to our addiction!

[Sequoia]

3. That's sounds trashy.

[paparush]

4. I'm stunned, daily, by the scale of development in downtown Asheville.

My beloved Grove Corner Market has moved out to W. Asheville.
I walk under the shadow of empty, high rise condos with more on the drawing board. I see a city council unable to muster the will to say "no".
Impermanence, baby...impermanence. *sigh*