A group of houses on my street have been bought by a developer who plans to tear them down to build condos. I have no objection to that - it's a highrise neighbourhood. However, they've boarded up the windows of the houses, which makes them look run down and derelict and creates a dead zone on the street. (This is particularly frustrating since they hadn't even submitted their development application to city hall when they started boarding the houses up, so they created this dead zone without making any progress towards renewal.)
Why would you board up houses that you're going to tear down anyway? Are you worried that someone will break in and start wrecking them before you can start wrecking them yourself? Why not just put plain solid white cheap blinds/curtains in the window (or even board them up on the inside with a piece of wallboard or something else white) so they won't look so conspicuously abandoned to passers-by? That would actually probably reduce the likelihood that people would mess around with them - if you see a house with the blinds closed and no one going in or out at that exact moment, you assume someone is home and just not going in or out at that exact moment. You'd have to pay close attention and perhaps even stake it out to notice that it's empty, whereas the boards make it look abandoned from a distance.
I don't care that they're tearing down houses or that they want to build a big condo tower, but I really resent that they're doing this in a way that makes it look so empty and abandoned. My neighbourhood feels very safe at all hours of the day and night, and this is because it's alive. There are people walking around, going in and out of homes and shops and restaurants. When I'm walking around alone after dark, if I ever feel unsafe, I can duck into any of the many businesses that are still open or even into another residential building if I can manage to follow someone in. If a bad guy is following me, they don't know where I might be going, which door might have witnesses behind it who are expecting me. But these boarded-up houses are clearly not where I'm going. They clearly don't have someone inside waiting for me. They're just a dead zone that doesn't contribute to the life of the street.
Why go to all the trouble of boarding up the houses and making them look derelict when you could just do nothing and leave them looking unremarkable?
3 comments:
Boarding up houses before they've even submitted an application?? Wow. Among other things, it shows how confident the developers are that they'll get what they want.
I understand boarding up buildings that are crumbling and derelict, but if these houses were in good shape... what, as you say, is the point?
#LeastImportantThing: How long has the area been a hi-rise neighbourhood? Were these houses hold-outs?
It's been a highrise neighbourhood at least since the 70s. There are houses in it too and the highrise cluster is surrounded by streets and streets of houses. But it is very tempting for developers to buy up houses and put up highrises - you buy maybe half a dozen houses at half a million to a million each, and you can build 200 condos that will sell for $300K to $700K each.
None of which I object to, but some developers are so inconsiderate of the people who are living in the neighbourhood. At least my condo is nicer. The site was originally a parking lot, and it operated as a parking lot right up until the day before they broke ground. (And part of our garage is going to be public parking after it gets built, so the neighbourhood is only inconvenienced while the actual construction is going on instead of years and years ahead of time pre-emptively.)
Oh yeah, developers want hi-rises. And they don't care about neighbourhoods. There's no profit in that.
Post a Comment