{"id":23,"date":"2007-09-26T12:46:11","date_gmt":"2007-09-26T19:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/mybirmingham\/2007\/09\/26\/are-there-enough-voices\/"},"modified":"2007-09-26T12:46:11","modified_gmt":"2007-09-26T19:46:11","slug":"are-there-enough-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/2007\/09\/26\/are-there-enough-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Are there enough voices?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"1\"><strong>Editor&#8217;s Note:<\/strong> <em>I received the following letter from  Jeremy C. Erdreich this afternoon. Erdreich is the principal of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.erdreicharchitecture.com\" title=\"Erdreich Architecture - official website\">Erdreich Architecture, PC<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.erdreicharchitecture.com\" title=\"Erdreicharchirecture.com\"><\/a>. It was written in response to <a href=\"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/mybirmingham\/2007\/09\/19\/election-07-definitions-needed-for-urban-success\/\" title=\"Definitions needed for urban success\">this post<\/a> on our city&#8217;s urban fabric. If anyone else has comments on the post, either comment directly to the post or submit your letter to <a href=\"mailto:andre@bhamterminal.com\">andre@bhamterminal.com<\/a>. &#8211; <\/em>ACN<\/font><\/p>\n<p>Andr\u00e9,<\/p>\n<p>Great job with The Terminal. I peruse it daily, as do friends of mine.<\/p>\n<p>I want to commend you particularly on your editorial regarding the city&#8217;s attitude towards its history and its sense of urban place. As you know, we&#8217;ve always had a weak sense of the public, of the collective, and of urbanity here. I am very disheartened by the destruction of the Birmingham News building &#8211; as much about the lack of debate of other options as the actual demolition.<\/p>\n<p>I witnessed a similar demolition request at Design Review this morning for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bhamwiki.com\/wiki\/index.php?title=Parliament_House\" title=\"Parliament House Hotel - Bhamwiki.com\">Parliament House Hotel<\/a> on 20<sup>th<\/sup> Street. The committee focused only on how the parking deck&#8217;s alley face would be patched once the connector to the hotel was removed. The loss of the building itself was never addressed in discussion. Only at the very end did [design review committee] chair Sam Frazier say something like &#8220;You know, this is actually an historic building. Doris Day stayed here; President Nixon slept here. Is this building defined as historic?&#8221; He posed the question to Karla Calvert, the city historic officer, who demurred: &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure; I don&#8217;t think so.&#8221; Sam asked her for a yes or a no, but she would not give one. So he gave up, the demolition passed, and in a few years the city&#8217;s best example of late &#8220;Miami Beach&#8221; Modern will ostensibly be replaced by a mediocre, boxy, red brick UAB building of some sort or another.<\/p>\n<p>History is subjective, and what we define as &#8220;historic&#8221; is subjective. But is was just sad that whether in the case of the News, or the Parliament House, there are only a few lone voices speaking out, if at all, and no movement to at least hold owners and developers more accountable to the community for their plans.<\/p>\n<p>Again, thanks for your enlightened editorial.<\/p>\n<p>Jeremy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/2007\/09\/26\/are-there-enough-voices\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"125\" src=\"\" class=\"alignleft wp-post-image tfe\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><p>Editor&#8217;s Note: I received the following letter from Jeremy C. Erdreich this afternoon. Erdreich is the principal of Erdreich Architecture, PC. It was written in response to this post on our city&#8217;s urban fabric. If anyone else has comments on &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/2007\/09\/26\/are-there-enough-voices\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6,7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alabama","category-birmingham","category-commentary","category-development"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p50I8-n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/dearbham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}