A Monument to Greed
A monument to greed
Perry Deane Young
One good thing about recently having to be away from my beloved Chapel Hill for a month was that I didn’t have to look at that hideous monstrosity taking shape on West Rosemary Street. Every time I have to drive or walk west toward that once pleasant area, my blood boils when I look up and see this huge monument to greed looming over all else in front of me.
For weeks and months we have all watched in dismay as the concrete and steel piled up and up and up to radically alter the low skyline we’re all used to. That this “Greenbridge” project is masquerading as something good for the environment is just plain ludicrous. The only things green about it are the greed in the developers’ eyes and the greenbacks they hope to reap from the destruction of yet another neighborhood. That certain “environmental” groups are in cahoots with Greenbridge reminds us that the right wingers have no franchise on hypocrisy.
Even if the building were as “green” as it’s being touted, it is still a disastrous mistake for the environment. How in the world this project ever got through our planning commission is a mystery to me. Do we even have a planning commission if such a building can get approved? How it cleared the town council supposedly dedicated to the good of our town is yet another mystery. But the real mystery is how could we ordinary citizens have grown so complacent that we allowed this to happen.
Greenbridge violates every tenet of careful and sensible planning. It has already destroyed a once viable neighborhood and for the moment turned it into something like a very dangerous combat zone. The building is out of all proportion to everything surrounding it. It has already changed a low-level neighborhood of small houses into a very high-priced commercial zone. If you don’t believe me, take a look across Rosemary Street where a huge lot has already been “cleared for development.”
What Greenbridge will have to offer will benefit nobody in that immediate neighborhood and only a ridiculously small number in the rest of the town. In fact, most of the people in the surrounding blocks will probably never set foot inside this awful building now looming over their lives.
With “luxury condos” planned for the huge parking lot once owned by the town on Franklin Street, the last thing our town needed was more space for the very rich on West Rosemary Street. You have to ask yourself, again, why is the town of Chapel Hill in the business of encouraging such high-end development when there is such a crying need for lower and middle-income housing here?
In his great book, In Design with Nature, Ian McHarg wrote that “poverty exercises a great restraint on vulgarity and wealth is its fuel.” My mountain ancestors would say Chapel Hill is suffering from too much money and too little sense. The traditional charm of Chapel Hill involved a town of small neighborhoods that grew out of and served the University. Almost overnight, we have watched that charm disappear in the face of monumental and uncontrolled development. Every way you look, there are huge ugly buildings taking shape and blocking the view—not for anything the town needs, but creating new needs for new residents.
Where once there was a magnificent green space in front of the University Motel, now there is the very latest in prison architecture being built right up to the sidewalk. At last there is a conglomeration of ugly buildings that makes even Meadowmont look good.
We will soon be facing an election in Chapel Hill. All of us who love this town should demand that candidates who want our votes must pledge to bring an end to all this. We can’t undo the serious damage done by Greenbridge and the people developing the University Motel property, but we can work to insure that there will be no more of these monuments to greed in our town.
Perry Deane Young
One good thing about recently having to be away from my beloved Chapel Hill for a month was that I didn’t have to look at that hideous monstrosity taking shape on West Rosemary Street. Every time I have to drive or walk west toward that once pleasant area, my blood boils when I look up and see this huge monument to greed looming over all else in front of me.
For weeks and months we have all watched in dismay as the concrete and steel piled up and up and up to radically alter the low skyline we’re all used to. That this “Greenbridge” project is masquerading as something good for the environment is just plain ludicrous. The only things green about it are the greed in the developers’ eyes and the greenbacks they hope to reap from the destruction of yet another neighborhood. That certain “environmental” groups are in cahoots with Greenbridge reminds us that the right wingers have no franchise on hypocrisy.
Even if the building were as “green” as it’s being touted, it is still a disastrous mistake for the environment. How in the world this project ever got through our planning commission is a mystery to me. Do we even have a planning commission if such a building can get approved? How it cleared the town council supposedly dedicated to the good of our town is yet another mystery. But the real mystery is how could we ordinary citizens have grown so complacent that we allowed this to happen.
Greenbridge violates every tenet of careful and sensible planning. It has already destroyed a once viable neighborhood and for the moment turned it into something like a very dangerous combat zone. The building is out of all proportion to everything surrounding it. It has already changed a low-level neighborhood of small houses into a very high-priced commercial zone. If you don’t believe me, take a look across Rosemary Street where a huge lot has already been “cleared for development.”
What Greenbridge will have to offer will benefit nobody in that immediate neighborhood and only a ridiculously small number in the rest of the town. In fact, most of the people in the surrounding blocks will probably never set foot inside this awful building now looming over their lives.
With “luxury condos” planned for the huge parking lot once owned by the town on Franklin Street, the last thing our town needed was more space for the very rich on West Rosemary Street. You have to ask yourself, again, why is the town of Chapel Hill in the business of encouraging such high-end development when there is such a crying need for lower and middle-income housing here?
In his great book, In Design with Nature, Ian McHarg wrote that “poverty exercises a great restraint on vulgarity and wealth is its fuel.” My mountain ancestors would say Chapel Hill is suffering from too much money and too little sense. The traditional charm of Chapel Hill involved a town of small neighborhoods that grew out of and served the University. Almost overnight, we have watched that charm disappear in the face of monumental and uncontrolled development. Every way you look, there are huge ugly buildings taking shape and blocking the view—not for anything the town needs, but creating new needs for new residents.
Where once there was a magnificent green space in front of the University Motel, now there is the very latest in prison architecture being built right up to the sidewalk. At last there is a conglomeration of ugly buildings that makes even Meadowmont look good.
We will soon be facing an election in Chapel Hill. All of us who love this town should demand that candidates who want our votes must pledge to bring an end to all this. We can’t undo the serious damage done by Greenbridge and the people developing the University Motel property, but we can work to insure that there will be no more of these monuments to greed in our town.
posted by Perry Deane Young at 6:08 AM
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