The Planning Commission will meet this Wednesday at 7 p.m. Looks as if the main thing on the agenda is a request from Southern Illinois Healthcare to rezone property located at
112 and 200 North Poplar Street from R-2, Medium Density Residential,
to PA, Professional Administrative Office, meaning, I would guess, the hospital would like to knock down a couple of houses it owns so that it can convert them to more modern office buildings.
Hospitals, in general, have a poor track record on historic preservation as they see no purpose in owning structures with uses not central to their primary mission. They tend to view it more economical to raze older buildings than to spend the money to repurpose them as doing so redirects money that they feel could be better spent serving their patients.
Hospitals, in general, have a poor track record on historic preservation as they see no purpose in owning structures with uses not central to their primary mission. They tend to view it more economical to raze older buildings than to spend the money to repurpose them as doing so redirects money that they feel could be better spent serving their patients.
I'm not sure what to think about this historic preservation idea. Is every old, beat up house in Carbondale, of a certain age, historic? I'm thinking not. I have no idea of where these houses fall in the spectrum of significant vs. mundane. I just don't think that every house is significant.
ReplyDeleteMost of the houses on the north side are bungalow style and no big loss if they come down. It would be nice though it 1) landlords kept them up better and 2) the city had done a better job over the past two decades of making landlords keep them up.
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