News of the Arroyo
Title: | I hear you, Annie |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2006-06-28 |
Summary: | June 28, 2006 - Columnist Larry Wilson agrees that the homes at the base of the Colorado Street Bridge are a "bit much." What an understatement. |
Author: | Larry Wilson |
Publication: | Pasadena Star-News |
Content: | One reader remembers, although she gets it slightly wrong, a cloaking device that the late Chuck Cherniss sometimes used in this space to allow anonymous venting. I know this because she signs her recent long handwritten note to me \"Annie Anon.\" Chuck used to call his source, or sources, \"Annie Non.\" I don\'t recall a separate moniker for when he who must remain nameless was a guy. As do all journalists, I have a healthy dislike as a rule for the desire to go unnamed. Letter-to-the-editor writers constantly seek to sign their missives \"A concerned citizen\" or merely \"A. Smith\" instead of their full names. We, unlike other newspapers in town, neither allow pseudonyms nor just initials unless the person is really known as \"P.J.\" or somesuch. We require addressees and phone numbers, though we don\'t print them. And I will never understand why some papers who, as do we, ordinarily require that the writer also list her or his hometown, break from that when it comes to one mode of transmission, so that you see \"Jane Jones, Via e-mail,\" rather than \"Jane Jones, Arcadia,\" as if people suddenly lost their cities when writing on the Internet. Oh, well. Annie rails at me - because she apparently doesn\'t want to rail herself, at least by name - because I haven\'t \"led the charge against the despoiling of THE BRIDGE,\" by which she means local architects Moule + Polyzoides\' revamping of the disused old Vista del Arroyo Bungalows near the Colorado Street Bridge and adding more condos around it. \"Maybe next year\'s \\ poster by Kent \\ would show the `lovely\' view of those godawful 2-3 story condos being built up and into the bridge,\" Annie writes. I had seen the construction, and seen how the former \"bungalows\" - huge winter homes, really, surrounding -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the old hotel that now is the Ninth Circuit courthouse - are almost finished, and are lovely indeed. As staffer Gary Scott noted in a recent story, they will also only be available to millionaires, just as the originals were at the turn of the last century. And so it goes. But I hadn\'t paid close attention to the new construction. Tuesday I drove down into the Arroyo Seco and parked beneath the bridge, sweating in the New Orleans-style heat. It\'s true - the condominiums are extraordinarily close to the pillars of the bridge; they rise up into the space formed by the famous arches of the bridge, changing that space; and they are really on the arroyo floor, and very close to the street. \"It\'ll be hard for ... maybe even Kent to paint the gorgeous bridge when the openings have been filled with condos,\" Annie writes. As I stared up into the sun, checking out as well the nearby plastic fake palm tree that serves as a cell-phone tower, neighborhood activist Emina Darakjy drove up and parked behind me. \"It\'s terrible, isn\'t it, Larry?\" she said. \"Bit much,\" I agreed, looking down toward the closed Army base known charmingly as Desiderio that now also will be sold, picturing condos. Liz and Stefanos are wonderful architects. I\'m hoping for the best in the end. But I hear you, Annie. larry.wilson@sgvn.com Larry Wilson is editor of the Pasadena Star-News. |
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