Here in Kent, there's a lovely old Tudor style building across the street from the University that, in its heyday, was a very elegant restaurant called the Robin Hood Inn. Sadly, it eventually ended up becoming a grunge bar and fell into a state of terrible disrepair due to neglect by its various owners over the years. It closed rather abruptly last summer and is slated for demolition unless some good kind hearted soul steps forward to save it. The building is 75 years old, hardly an ancient building, but one of Kent's more noteworthy buildings because of its unique architectural style. Across the street from it stands a faux half timbered Elizabethan style building to complement the Tudor building across the way from it. In the past few decades, poor urban planning has resulted in the demolition of so many beautiful old homes and buildings that added character to our city. Fast food joints and gas stations have taken over and make our thoroughfares look downright tacky. Sure, those businesses generate revenue and are good for the college students who frequent them, but I dislike the traffic nightmares and frequent accidents that they create. Bad placement near heavily trafficked intersections has resulted in a high accident zone near several fast food joints in my own neighborhood, for example. Just another example of poor urban planning on the part of the people who put those fast food joints where they are. The prospect of losing a unique architectural treasure that's not only a piece of Kent history but is also in my neighborhood really ticks me off. Already, the front windows in my living room of my apartment overlook an eyesore of an old vacant and now abandoned gas station. No plans to replace the Robin Hood once it's gone have been revealed, suggesting that it, too, will become just another eyesore and a blot on my neighborhood which is filled with poorly maintained and once graceful old residential homes that have become blighted student housing. Now, I've lived in the same two block perimeter my entire life and as such, my neighborhood means a great deal to me. I've long believed that if you own property that it is incumbent on you to maintain it well, and if you don't, you should not be surprised if you are suddenly being angrily scorned by your neighbors. People who can't take that sort of scorn should not be property owners. I know that there are some....um.....it would be too kind to call them "slumlords".....who seem to buy nice property and run it into the ground, for what purpose, I do not know. Perhaps there is some financial incentive in it for them, say, a nice tax break or something. But I am tired unto death of seeing once graceful old homes and buildings fall into disrepair and become a blight on an otherwise perfectly nice neighborhood. Tearing them down and leaving gaping holes in a landscape is a lazy person's way out. If someone buys property and then finds that it is beyond their financial means to maintain, they ought to sell it, even if it means doing so at a loss. It's better to lose money and sell to someone who might care and keep up a good piece of property than to see something become so blighted that the only salvation for it is the wrecking ball.
I'm so tired of hearing the excuses that people make for letting old homes and buildings fall, "If it's old, tear it down." Um, 'scuse me, ever been to Europe? There are buildings there some of which are over a thousand years old! You can reach out and actually touch history! Americans are so short sighted that they think that if something's the slightest bit old, it's not worth keeping. They always want the new shiny thing that, when they grow tired of it, they want to throw it away and replace it with the NEW shiny thing. Americans have the most ridiculously short attention span and the least sense of their own history. Perhaps it's because we are such a young nation with such a relatively short history compared to the Old World nations. Americans are a restless lot, always looking for that next new big thing, out there, in another place, always on the move looking for greener pastures and never staying anywhere long enough to have any sense of personal investment in a town. Even city officials are often imported from some other place to act as executive managers instead of old fashioned mayors who had some sense of personal stake in a town where they had grown up and lived their whole lives. While I understand the notion of a "city manager", being something of a CEO running a business, there doesn't seem to be any sense of personal investment in a city that they come to run. For them, it's just another business venture, nothing more. They stay, do their jobs, then move on to the next position that can offer higher pay in another town somewhere else. No sense of loyalty. And that's why our town in recent years seems to lack any sense of cohesive urban planning. The people steering the ship don't seem to have a stake in our town. They're there to be managers and executives, not "go out and shake hands with the constituents" like the mayors of old did. Kent's just going to look like all the other cookie cutter towns out there filled with gas stations and fast food joints and bereft of any local charm. Who wants to live in a town with no unique identity and its history all plowed under and replaced with too many bright lights and too many big box businesses whose profits go to out of town home offices and no character whatsoever? No wonder Ohio's experienced a brain drain in recent years. Towns all across the state are doing the same thing, plowing under anything more than a few years old to put in the latest, shiniest thing that has come down the pike that may have a shelf life of but a few years and when it goes under, it leaves a massive concrete dead zone in its wake. Seen it happen, over and over again. When will we figure out what we're doing wrong and return to some semblance of sustainability so that towns can once again be charming, friendly, walkable places to live instead of being turned into ribbons of highway and concrete? And when will this wanton demolition of historic homes and buildings cease and instead be restored and returned to their former glory? After all, they don't build 'em like that anymore and never will be able to, so it makes more sense to have our local landmarks standing that played a part in the history of our towns. They are a part of our history that we can reach out and touch, and once gone, they're gone forever. And that's a real crime, if you ask me.
Here in Kent, there's a lovely old Tudor style building across the street from the University that, in its heyday, was a very elegant restaurant called the Robin Hood Inn. Sadly, it eventually ended up becoming a grunge bar and fell into a state of terrible disrepair due to neglect by its various owners over the years. It closed rather abruptly last summer and is slated for demolition unless some good kind hearted soul steps forward to save it. The building is 75 years old, hardly an ancient building, but one of Kent's more noteworthy buildings because of its unique architectural style. Across the street from it stands a faux half timbered Elizabethan style building to complement the Tudor building across the way from it. In the past few decades, poor urban planning has resulted in the demolition of so many beautiful old homes and buildings that added character to our city. Fast food joints and gas stations have taken over and make our thoroughfares look downright tacky. Sure, those businesses generate revenue and are good for the college students who frequent them, but I dislike the traffic nightmares and frequent accidents that they create. Bad placement near heavily trafficked intersections has resulted in a high accident zone near several fast food joints in my own neighborhood, for example. Just another example of poor urban planning on the part of the people who put those fast food joints where they are. The prospect of losing a unique architectural treasure that's not only a piece of Kent history but is also in my neighborhood really ticks me off. Already, the front windows in my living room of my apartment overlook an eyesore of an old vacant and now abandoned gas station. No plans to replace the Robin Hood once it's gone have been revealed, suggesting that it, too, will become just another eyesore and a blot on my neighborhood which is filled with poorly maintained and once graceful old residential homes that have become blighted student housing. Now, I've lived in the same two block perimeter my entire life and as such, my neighborhood means a great deal to me. I've long believed that if you own property that it is incumbent on you to maintain it well, and if you don't, you should not be surprised if you are suddenly being angrily scorned by your neighbors. People who can't take that sort of scorn should not be property owners. I know that there are some....um.....it would be too kind to call them "slumlords".....who seem to buy nice property and run it into the ground, for what purpose, I do not know. Perhaps there is some financial incentive in it for them, say, a nice tax break or something. But I am tired unto death of seeing once graceful old homes and buildings fall into disrepair and become a blight on an otherwise perfectly nice neighborhood. Tearing them down and leaving gaping holes in a landscape is a lazy person's way out. If someone buys property and then finds that it is beyond their financial means to maintain, they ought to sell it, even if it means doing so at a loss. It's better to lose money and sell to someone who might care and keep up a good piece of property than to see something become so blighted that the only salvation for it is the wrecking ball.
I'm so tired of hearing the excuses that people make for letting old homes and buildings fall, "If it's old, tear it down." Um, 'scuse me, ever been to Europe? There are buildings there some of which are over a thousand years old! You can reach out and actually touch history! Americans are so short sighted that they think that if something's the slightest bit old, it's not worth keeping. They always want the new shiny thing that, when they grow tired of it, they want to throw it away and replace it with the NEW shiny thing. Americans have the most ridiculously short attention span and the least sense of their own history. Perhaps it's because we are such a young nation with such a relatively short history compared to the Old World nations. Americans are a restless lot, always looking for that next new big thing, out there, in another place, always on the move looking for greener pastures and never staying anywhere long enough to have any sense of personal investment in a town. Even city officials are often imported from some other place to act as executive managers instead of old fashioned mayors who had some sense of personal stake in a town where they had grown up and lived their whole lives. While I understand the notion of a "city manager", being something of a CEO running a business, there doesn't seem to be any sense of personal investment in a city that they come to run. For them, it's just another business venture, nothing more. They stay, do their jobs, then move on to the next position that can offer higher pay in another town somewhere else. No sense of loyalty. And that's why our town in recent years seems to lack any sense of cohesive urban planning. The people steering the ship don't seem to have a stake in our town. They're there to be managers and executives, not "go out and shake hands with the constituents" like the mayors of old did. Kent's just going to look like all the other cookie cutter towns out there filled with gas stations and fast food joints and bereft of any local charm. Who wants to live in a town with no unique identity and its history all plowed under and replaced with too many bright lights and too many big box businesses whose profits go to out of town home offices and no character whatsoever? No wonder Ohio's experienced a brain drain in recent years. Towns all across the state are doing the same thing, plowing under anything more than a few years old to put in the latest, shiniest thing that has come down the pike that may have a shelf life of but a few years and when it goes under, it leaves a massive concrete dead zone in its wake. Seen it happen, over and over again. When will we figure out what we're doing wrong and return to some semblance of sustainability so that towns can once again be charming, friendly, walkable places to live instead of being turned into ribbons of highway and concrete? And when will this wanton demolition of historic homes and buildings cease and instead be restored and returned to their former glory? After all, they don't build 'em like that anymore and never will be able to, so it makes more sense to have our local landmarks standing that played a part in the history of our towns. They are a part of our history that we can reach out and touch, and once gone, they're gone forever. And that's a real crime, if you ask me.
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