The market is driving
One of the more interesting nuggets Zoback posted from last night’s City Council meeting was in regard to North Main St development. Apparently Councilor Smith was adding his two cents to the ‘what the hell are we going to do with all these old buildings’ conversation, to which Assistant City Manager Julie Jacobson replied “The market will drive what goes in [all the buildings,]”. While this is typically true, markets being what they are, the one aspect of North Main Street (all of Lincoln Sq really) which makes Jacobson’s statement false is the cost of energy.
If you look at the buildings in Lincoln Sq, most of them have a history of government funding or large subsidies, courts, schools, police stations ect. But if you talk to people involved with some of the private businesses down there, Tuckerman Hall for example, you start to hear a common complaint. The cost of energy in these old buildings makes doing business nearly impossible. So here’s my unofficial solution.
The owners of all the properties in Lincoln Sq, public and private, need to come together with the goal of building a small green grid that extends from the Gateway Park Project, up to the Art Museum, over to the old court house, up to the WHA building on Belmont and back down to Gateway. If you were to look at all the buildings in that square from above, like so:
View Larger Map
you would see right away there are an abundance of very flat roofs available for solar and wind power generation that would certainly take the edge off energy costs for all these properties, if not exceed their needs entirely assuming they were linked. Seems like everyone has a plan to turn the Auditorium into a marketplace or performing arts center or the court house into a school or mall of sorts; the only way this is going to happen is either oil prices drop to 1990’s levels or we start acting like a ‘green city’ as opposed to proclaiming we’re one. There are excellent subsidies in place to make such a project manageable if one was to create a corporate entity linking these properties for the purpose of creating, storing and sharing energy - the only reasonable way to power these amazing structures built without expensive energy being a concern.
If we don’t start thinking about how much it costs to heat and light these places, then yes, the market will decide their fate and they will be just as empty ten years from now as they are today.
Comments
4 Responses to “The market is driving”
Leave a Reply
Awesome idea and concept. This is the type of forward thinking idea that needs to be discussed and acted upon within this city.
Oh please 4rilla, this is far from foreward thinking. Going green is about as conventional as you can get these days. The energy policy in this are should consist of:
Winter - Give preoperty owners tax write offs for space heaters. Also, encourage Businees owners/employees to keep warm by shitting their pants.
Summer - have this guy hold a private workshop for area business owners at The Craft Center.
Of course, I have asked about two if not three times in the past six months where the rfp’s are for this development and for the Union Station Garage, and the lots at Washington Square. I get the same response as everyone else
[...] and Mike don’t like the precedent that has been set. Brendan says people like his idea of a green grid for North Main Street, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to [...]