Last month we talked about this sign “Ugly Pop-Ups: Destroying Family Housing on Lanier Place.”. Following is an attempt to explain from a neighbor, Gary Tischler.
A while back, I had a talk with a neighborhood friend about popups and their implications to the Lanier Heights neighborhood, standing right across the street from one of those popups next to the day care center. He offered up the idea that maybe people should get used to the idea of change, and the popups and the targeting of the neighborhood by developers was one of those change things that might be inevitable.
That may be so, but something’s getting lost in that discussion. I saw it in the cavalier notice given by the developer reps that they had indeed targeted our neighborhood and were indeed seeking to get people to sell their houses in order to convert them to condos, and in the comments on the net that followed Paul’s signs next door to his new neighbors. In most of the comments—most of them from people who don’t live here—the attitude was one of surprise or anger that neighborhood residents—be they homeowners or renters—would object to the presence of the popups, or openly oppose the idea.
Many folks—mostly homeowners—are upset about this wholesale attempt to basically alter our neighborhood. That’s what’s getting lost in the discussions—the consequences to the neighborhood if the developers succeed.
What will happen to put it very simply is that the nature of the neighborhood will be dramatically changed to the point where we will lose most of the things, the characteristics of the neighborhood that we love.
I’m not trying to speak for other people—I’m a renter, and we’ve lived here for well over 15 years now. I found the neighborhood early on to be deceptive—I mean it looks on the surface to be kind of a bucolic place, quiet, a kind of residential, one-family housing island close to but also separate from the street scene on Columbia Road, the traffic on Calvert and the night and day bustle of 18th Street and all that entails, all of which by the way add the special urban flavor that everyone loves.
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