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Originally Posted by Loopy
It was a residence hotel, a flophouse, if you will. There is nothing inside to preserve except a bunch of 6X10 sleeping chambers.
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Fair enough. I haven't seen the inside, so I can't comment on that.
Don't get me wrong. I think this is nearly a perfect proposal as-is. What concerns me, however, is the co-opting of the landmark cause as a veil for NIMBYism, and also the facadectomy treatment as the "ideal" solution to development vs. preservation issues.
In this case, the lot is huge, the developer is clearly ready to build tall, and there doesn't seem to be too much to gain from keeping only the facade. So, keeping the whole building doesn't seem too difficult. The risks to this trend, obviously, are that 1) we end up with a bunch of Disneyland facade landmarks that are only skin-deep, with no real soul or occupyable space (this is certainly happening quite frequently already), and 2) that the precedent is set when a true "3-D Landmark" (e.g. NY Life) cannot be saved because it would be "discriminatory."