Posted Jun 16, 2007, 2:42 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 384
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Thanks for your comments DaMan. I am saying churches are community leaders, but definitely not suggesting they are or should be assuming the role of politicians in that respect. They are leaders, or have the capacity to be leaders in a spiritual sense. That distinction is important as others more or less have noted.
As PacifiNW has said about the building's interior, "...it was basically a dump". And as true as that may have been, so what? It was the exterior that most people saw and knew as part of the city's urban environment. The exterior was the issue. The interior could have easily if not cheaply, been restored to some kind of contemporarily functional magnificence.
Philip Stewart of the Portland chapter of the AIA (in a comment over at portlandarchitecture) also alludes to the Rosefriend's structurally unsupported masonry as a major obstacle to preservation or conservation. While that may be quite true, the facts of this issue were not clearly and openly disclosed to the public in a manner consistent with regard for a building that by virtue of it's architectural distinction (personal tastes aside) and it's decades long presence in the city, was arguably a very important part of the city's urban experience. Had this been done, despite the obstacles represented by the Rosefriend buildings structural integrity, some kind of much more favorable outcome for the block and the Rosefriend's signifcance to the city might have occurred.
Even if no other alternative than demolition of the Rosefriend could have been decided upon, at least something better than the current outcome might have happened. What's going on instead is definitely old school.
Yeah, it is time to move on and learn from the lesson offered by this disaster.
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