Photos and blog post by John HoffIt was with a great sense of hope that, on December 16, 2008, Johnny Northside Dot Com reported plans for the world's largest YWCA to be located at 800 West Broadway, click here.
Now a number of media sources are reporting on the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of the Great Neighborhoods! Development Corp, click here for an example of the coverage. At least one internet media source reported the building in question was slated to be a "YMCA" instead of a "YWCA." Naturally, this small indignity must be acknowledged on Johnny Northside with the predictable musical link, click here.
Now that the bankruptcy is public, let me say for the first time publicly that, in the privacy of my own mind and heart, I have always strongly objected to...
...that exclamation mark in the middle of the name of the Great Neighborhoods! Corporation. I can't even tell you how much I loathe this kind of highly experimental and dubious punctuation. If there's any silver lining in this dark cloud, it is surely that: I won't have to endure this hyperbolic mid-point punctuation as part of a successful completed project. In fact, while making this blog post I discovered you can't even use an exclamation mark in a meta-tag.
Another good reason NOT to do that.
On a more dreary note...
The alley next to the building--between 800 West Broadway and the Burger King at 818 West Broadway--has turned into some kind of hang-out for no-account metal scavengers, who for the last few days have been found there early in the morning stripping wire and crushing aluminum cans which they haul around in nasty, decrepit baby buggies.
Calls have been made to the police, and also to the offices of two City Council members asking for cleanup in the alley. Clearly, the alley hasn't been cleaned in a while: note the discarded tire with ivy growing out of it.
It is discouraging to hear of the death of the Great Neighborhoods(...) dream, however, one hears rumors of other positive plans at the site which are just as good, just as visionary. Unfortunately, there's nothing this blog can get on the record and out in the open to be able to say, "Something good will happen in this building, you just wait and see."
Instead, attention is turned to one of the most difficult and discouraging Northside neighborhood revitalization tasks: making sure no-accounts don't hang around, doing their no-account stuff, and dragging down our neighborhood by their mere presence and the litter they leave behind.
