Yesterday, the wife and I were heading home from the KC Home & Garden Show and drove by what will soon be the spot where the Kansas City Fire Alarm Exchange Building USED to be.
They are demolishing the building.
For the past 3 years I've driven by this building at least once a day, usually twice a day, every day. I've fallen in love with the building and hoped that all of the development in downtown Kansas City would open up an opportunity for this beautiful, historic building to be reclaimed. Unfortunately, just the opposite is happening.
Soon it will be a pile of rubble. After that, it will be cleared off and the land will be used for a surface parking lot. That's right, in an area that's completely surrounded by surfacing parking, they're building yet MORE surface parking. What in the hell is this city's fascination with surface parking lots? Didn't we learn anything from 2 decades of destroying historic buildings in the 60s and 70s that maybe we should be a little smarter about how we go about things?
Meanwhile, where is the Historical Society on this one? Why are they worried about whether the color of green on my house has too much yellow in it or not to be historically accurate (something that could be completely corrected later) only to wach a beautiful, historic building get destroyed BY THE CITY for Surface Parking? WTF?
Boy, I wish they would have scratched this endeavor out of the city budget instead of the zoo. The only way this project could be worse is when we eventually give some developer TIF money to build a new building on this blighted parking lot in a few years. That'll be swell.
This is yet another inefficiency at city hall -- and really bad decision on someone's part. Seems like cleaning up these items within budgets would have been a wiser decision than slashing entire line items in the budget.
Anyway, RIP Fire Alarm Exchange Building...it's a shame that you'll soon be gone.
Funny, I drove by that building the other day and thought to myself - what a cool office for an ad agency or some other small business. That's sad to see.
Posted by: Kyle | March 31, 2008 at 12:18 PM
I am so outraged I can't even see straight...what money is exchanging hands for this project? And whose hands is it going to? KCMO is dead broke and they're using our tax dollars to tear down historic buildings!?
Posted by: MichelleD | March 31, 2008 at 12:29 PM
I've always liked that building as well and had the same thoughts about what a great place it would be/have been for my law office. Sad.
Posted by: Lance Weber | April 09, 2008 at 01:16 AM
A sad, sad day for our supposed urban renaissance.
http://mit.edu/jase/www/goodbye-firealarmexchange/
p.s. let me know if you'd like text attribution for that photo; it has a link to here but i didn't want to cite your name unless authorized. thanks for the image, and the article. good to know others are mourning this loss - a loss of a structure and a loss of opportunity.
Posted by: jase wilson | April 15, 2008 at 11:03 PM
Jase, how you handled it is great. Thanks for getting the word out.
I drove by yesterday and the building is now officially a pile of rubble. For surface parking...it's a darn shame.
Posted by: Brent | April 16, 2008 at 08:38 AM