Maybe not a bank, but what is to become office space for one of the nation’s biggest banks that has several new structures around town. But let’s call it a bank.
So the guy finds out that the bank was once a department store that was part of a strategy to make a city’s downtown area a hub of retail activity by having not just that department store but at least four department stores, including a really new one. Through a complicated financial arrangement the agency in charge of redevelopment basically gave the parent company of the department store a gift of a loan because the terms of repayment were based on the store achieving sales activity that were well in excess of the norm for the company.
Then the guy learns that before the stylish old building was a department store it was a real genuine bank with architectural character and had to be completely gutted to accommodate the store. The store was around for five years and has sat vacant since then (one local real estate expert opined in 2003 "that’s not a corner you would want to have empty for long") although another developer bought it for $2.5 million in 2005 and hoped to do something with it.
As a kicker, the guy finds out that the new owner-the one that wants to make it back into offices for banking operations and have employees in it by 2013 or 2014-won’t "make any alterations to the building which would in any way affect its historical significance or exterior architecture", even though the building was made over for its department store debut.
So the guy says "wouldn’t it have been preferable to save the character of the building and spare the city from another intervention in the marketplace in the name of urban planning"?