They Paved Paradise and Put up a Parking Lot

I have never been a big Joni Mitchell fan but the lyrics of Big Yellow Taxi (in 1970, when she was staying on Maui) have always stuck with me. Now that I see apartment buildings going up all around my neighborhood the song lyrics are getting more and more relevant.

This is not an article ranting about new construction in my part of town. I get that people moving into my fast-growing city need affordable housing (one of the city’s biggest problems). But I am stating to wonder just what we value in today’s complex society (more human stuff versus a little bit of nature). Neither is this an article about my view of historical buildings versus modern architecture. ?I am just wondering which means more to us, everything new or some of it old or even natural? This is the part where Joni Mitchells song comes in. Is there a way to have a happy middle ground. I heard this phrase in a PBS show sponsored by History Colorado. The historian said: “you don’t need a cure unless you have a disease.” Is nature and history now considered a disease?

The CURE he was talking about was the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal program of the 1960s and 1970s. The disease that was identified then was urban blight and the cure was to bulldoze historic sections of downtown and use generous federal money to rebuild modern structures. It was seen as easier to tear down older buildings, and even full city blocks, rather than try to refurnish them and preserve some of the history. Modern (often very unattractive in my opinion) was better than historic. The future was more important than the past. My town has one of the most boring looking downtowns you will even see.

In my town (sorry for the specifics – you won’t be interested in this part unless you live in El Paso County, Colorado) this program tore down historic buildings like the Old (second) Antlers Hotel, The Jimmy Burns Opera House/ Chief Theater (I remember going to my first movie in this theater), the Colorado Springs High School (now Palmer High School) and the Cotton Club of Fannie Mae Duncan fame. City leaders like mayors: Eugene McCleary (1967-1973), Andrew Marshall (1973-1975), and Larry Ochs (1975-1979) oversaw the application of this cure, but I am not sure the patient was better for the treatment. Read on.

“In the 1970s the national craze for urban renewal swept city planners. Urban renewal authority planners targeted the “blighted” sections of the city south of Colorado Avenue for renewal. As happened throughout much of urban America in the 1960s and 1970s, the zeal for renewal meant wholesale destruction of the dense urban fabric that grew organically over decades to be replaced with large scale, institutional structures occupying entire city blocks.

And by no coincidence, the landscapes deemed “blighted” were usually minority neighborhoods with low-income housing and a plethora of shops and businesses to serve that community. Colorado Springs was no exception, and the blocks from Sierra Madre Street to Weber Street south of Colorado Avenue, the areas of historically African American concentrations, were bulldozed. In the heart of this zone was the Cotton Club, razed in 1975.

Today the city’s legacy to urban renewal are numerous large office buildings, the Pikes Peak Center, the Sun Plaza, the County Courthouse and Jail, and County Office buildings— institutional structures that, in the spirit of modernism, create a clear break from the past and embrace supposed rational progress. The scale and use of these buildings present an imposing, sterile face to the pedestrian.

Today’s vibrant pedestrian zone hits an abrupt halt as one walks south on Tejon Street and reaches Colorado Avenue and the urban renewal projects, until shops again pick up three or four blocks south. The Cotton Club and the many other shops in the small-scale buildings that foster human interaction were sacrificed in the name of modernity and a bright vision for a clean urban future.

The urban fabric now is interrupted by an abundance of surface parking lots where once stood shops, club, houses, and businesses—the stuff that encourages human mingling and makes a commercial zone function. Much of the early African American neighborhoods are gone, particularly the largest in what was then the southeast of the city.

Urban renewal again took some of those as the Lowell neighborhood developed after South Junior High closed in 1983. The neighborhoods around the AT&SF (Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad) depot were particularly hard hit as clearance slowly removed nearby houses. Housing that remains in the neighborhood along south Cascade Avenue towards Mill Street gives a clue to the character of the old blue-collar districts of the city, even as individual houses continue to be torn down in the downtown.” https://www.cspm.org/cos-150-story/urban-renewal/

Yes, you can call me old-fashion but after the citizens of my town finally put a halt to the CURE, many buildings were saved and remodeled not bulldozed. The Old Court House is now the Pioneer Museum, The Cheyenne Building is now a nice brew pub. The Ivywild school building is now another nice place to eat and drink. The Craigmoor Sanitorium was incorporated into the new University of Colorado at Colorado Springs campus. Several major old historic structures face an uncertain future (Union Printers Home and Lowell school). Let us hope there is a third way between old run-down buildings with a long memory and the bulldozer for them. We need to remember at least some of our past to build a better future.

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

They paved paradise

Put up a parking lot