Rough blogging week, I’m behind on several posts – including the county board recap, but here’s some more random thoughts on of course, the Edgewater (sick of it yet? I’m getting there), running candidates, tear down Mifflin Street?, ALRC committee member refuses to give Fire Department documents, student involvement in Freakfest and thoughtful comments about downtown development.
RUNNING CANDIDATES
Lukas Diaz looks at what it means to run candidates against someone or what it doesn’t mean. Interesting thoughts.
MORE EDGEWATER
Whitney Gould talking about the so-so design of the Edgewater. She raises some good questions about building buildings in a historic district. Should they look like what’s there, or be a modern building. I think its a false choice or a misunderstanding of what many feel about historic districts. Building a new building to look like an old building typically makes it just look out of place and awkward. I think buildings should be built for the time they are built, they just need to honor the historic district.
Mike Ivy’s article about National Guardian Life’s role in the Edgewater development left me with more questions than answers and my bullshit detector went off several times. I think that this deserves some more attention.
DESTROYING MIFFLIN STREET
Wow, if the Badger Herald depicts this correctly, this is quite the interesting discussion? Tear down (West) Mifflin Street houses and build 4 – 6 story buidlings? If there is any street in Madison that defines much of the history of the 60s and 70s its this street. It’s more recent history, but historic all the same. I think this needs some serious discussion if radical changes are going to be made.
SHAPIRO DEFIES FIRE DEPARTMENT REQUEST
I find this a little disturbing. Marsh Shapiro is the Tavern League representative at the ALRC, its an ex officio (non-voting) member, a consultant of sorts. The fire department appears to be asking for information to make a good decision. Do they prefer that the fire department make decisions about capacity based on their gut reactions. I don’t quite get the resistance. The undertones are that they are being targeted and probably think their capacities are going to get reduced, but I’m all for a little consistency downtown and if they found some inconsistencies downtown, what’s wrong with looking at what is safe? Of course, if they start lowering capacities at bars, they should probably think about lifting that alcohol license density plan and think about another way to measure the density instead of basing it on number of licenses.
WHY STUDENTS DON’T GET AND STAY INVOLVED
Again, the Badger Herald – I gotta give them props for covering so much local news, while the other local newspapers don’t. This article is interesting in that perhaps the reason students don’t get involved is because it’s not an event that is of interest to them? It’s been forced on them . . .
THOUGHTFUL
Here’s a thoughtful look at development issues in the downtown.
Ok, that’s all I have, hopefully next week the poison ivy will be gone, I’ll get some sleep and have more ability to post more posts.
