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ch-scene - RE: Ch-scene Digest, Vol 16, Issue 23

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Subject: RTP-area local music and culture

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  • From: "Allen, Richard" <RAllen AT WWNORTON.com>
  • To: <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: Ch-scene Digest, Vol 16, Issue 23
  • Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:15:56 -0500


Right now in Williamsburg and the Lower East Side, NYC, clubs are being shut
down because investment bankers are buying apartments in what they see as
"hot" "hip" "underpriced" (to them) neighborhoods, then complaining about the
very things that create hotness and hipness in those neighborhoods, i.e. the
nightclubs.

People with money (I would say yuppies except that the term is meaningless
now) buy near clubs because they imagine a fun atmosphere which will offset
the drabness of their lives. Then they have a kid and get livid because the
booming bass 10 blocks away wakes the baby, which cries all night. Then the
yuppies (so to speak, we're all whores here) can't get enough sleep to slog
through their 80 hour a week jobs, and they march down to City Hall. They own
property and pay a lot of taxes, so they always win in the end.

If you put 100 apartments atop the Cat's Cradle, I guarantee one of the
buyers is going to have a problem with the music within 2 years of the
apartments going on the market, and there will be big problems.

Another consideration: this development sounds vaguely like the Reston Town
Center, scourge of my hometown (if by scourge one means the sort of place one
hates and everyone else loves) - a fake downtown area which looks and feels
like a movie set. Sounds like a good compromise on paper but is entirely
prefab and gross in real life. Carrboro is a small town, not a suburb in need
of a fake downtown where "Freedom Street" meets "Democracy Drive."

for reference:
http://www.restontowncenter.com/popmap.html

RA




Message: 14
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:06:39 -0500
From: grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: cradle & arts center move
To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <421CAA0F.80808 AT ibiblio.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

Heh. I hope they read the "First Person" thing in last week's Indy by
the lady who moved into Downtown Durham expecting it to be silent as a
fucking tomb, all about how upset she is that there's a club in Downtown
Durham that makes noise after dark.

And while I sure as shit wouldn't want to live anywhere near a club,
especially one with booming bass, that's one reason why I bought several
acres of land in the country & built a house smack in the middle of it.
Rather than, you know, buying a building right in the middle of a
downtown commercial district & then moving into it.

I said this when Christa posted the previous info, and I'll say it
again: I predict hasslements from people moving into the
apartment/condos in this development if there is *any* noise after 10:00
p.m. from either the Cradle, the ArtsCenter, or the new outdoor
amphitheater between them.

I love the idea of mixed-use developments and people living above
commercial space, but it may be harder than people imagine to quickly
make the transition from a suburban/small-town headspace to a more
urban/mixed-use headspace. Certainly the person who wrote the piece in
the Indy seemed to have *no* room in her headspace for the notion that a
downtown area might be noisy after dark.

Ross




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