Kevin Riordan is one of my favorite writers here, and I thought his take on the 76er practice facility was simple, clever and brilliant. Here’s an excerpt, and if you haven’t, check out his blog, Blinq:
Perhaps that’s because so much of downtown has lain fallow since being obliterated by various redevelopment schemes, most of them grandiose, ill-advised and unrealized, in the 1960s and ’70s. What’s been built is a smattering of ‘object’ structures — solo acts that are set back from the street, far apart from each other and disconnected from their surroundings. These institutional, non-profit, publicly subsidized developments are lonely islands amid a sea of parking lots and too-broad boulevards.
So I’m more heartened by the city’s newest neighborhood planning effort, launched Tuesday, than by the prospect of a (purportedly) job-creating and, undoubtedly, thoroughly fortified NBA outpost. The Cooper-Grant/Central Waterfront Neighborhood Plan promises not grand edifices, but a process to tap into and connect the clusters of residents, churches and other elements of community life that have survived — despite the megaprojects around them.
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