Parkside: A View Askew
ByWhen you absolutely, positively want to build your high-rise condominium on public parkland, you have to be willing to monkey with reality and hope no one notices. The Pack Square Conservancy agreed with the City of Asheville and Buncombe County to use a set of guidelines to determine appropriate building specifications. One such specification requires that any building “must maintain a clear view corridor from the Vance Monument to the Buncombe County Court House, City Hall, and the mountains beyond.”
The drawing accompanying this guideline looks like this:
Stewart Coleman has come out with his own version of the Conservancy’s drawing. His looks like this:
In Coleman’s retooled drawing there’s no mention of any “mountains beyond”. In Coleman’s drawing the sightline has moved right up against the corner of City hall whereas the Conservancy drawing illustrated the sightline away from the corner.
Now I’m no design expert, but I can tell the difference between the official drawing and the one Coleman is peddling. If the guidelines don’t fit, Mr. Coleman and his cohorts evidently believe it’s better to remake reality rather than follow the rules.
There’s enough fishiness here without the Parkside team shifting lines and misleading the public.
Twitter: gordondsmith
says:
Mtn. X is reporting that City Staff is recommending Council greenlight Parkside if Coleman will shave off a story, go LEED, and do some affordable housing gesture.
The issue of violating the Pack Square Agreement isn’t mentioned.
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Twitter: gordondsmith
says:
Parkside isn’t a “done deal”, TP. That’s why they still have to go to City Council and have their lawsuit versus the Pack family settled in the courts. There’s also the as-yet-unbegun investigation into how the “mistake” was made, not to mention the mystery surrounding Coleman’s secret meetings with City and County staff before he purchased any of these properties.
I’m not sure why arch-conservatives like yourself are willing to brush this one under the rug. I think it must be knee-jerk.
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It’s disappointing to see anyone argue in favor of stealing and lying, like that’s the behavior that should be rewarded in our society. This development is based solely on greed and a contempt for anything that can be called the “commons”, like public-owned parkland, or an open and trustworthy local government.
If you think that only tree-huggers oppose this, why did the Downtown Association board vote unanimously that it violates the letter and the spirit of the Conservancy Guidelines and recommend that the City/County buy back the property? Unless I’m wrong, the DA is made up of local business owners and community leaders, not anarchists, witches, and closet communists.
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I’m really not clear what “financial benefit” you’re talking about. Coleman got a sweetheart deal on the property, so that was no great boon for local government. As for taxes, investment, economic growth, etc., that assumes that there will be no real estate developed to an equivalent value anywhere else in the city or county, and that the folks who might have lived in Parkside won’t find anywhere else to live in Asheville. This isn’t a zero-sum game.
I think a lot of us are of the opinion that putting such a large building on the park might very well make Asheville less attractive, and discourage investment elsewhere in the area. I’m guessing that at the very least Parkside will depress the value of the land that folks were talking about swapping with Coleman.
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