{"id":1314,"date":"2014-06-02T14:21:37","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T20:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/?p=1314"},"modified":"2014-06-02T14:25:04","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T20:25:04","slug":"sometimes-you-just-gotta-break-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/?p=1314","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes, you just gotta break stuff!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another year and another series of downtown buildings are set to be razed. \u00a0 After decades of little activity downtown, it seems like there are reports of buildings being demoed every few months or so. Whether by accident(?)<\/a>\u00a0or in the name of progress<\/a>, even our city hall<\/a>\u00a0has come down. \u00a0In almost all of the instances, there’s been much debate for history or for growth. \u00a0The latest is a a block of buildings downtown that have preservationists up in arms that enough is enough<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I went down to check out the progress and River Oaks has moved fast to knock down these properties.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The front facades give little indication to the true history of the buildings. \u00a0Most have been poorly re-skinned in attempts to “modernize” and its tough to see what can be salvaged.<\/p>\n

\"\"Its natural to point the finger at the current owners but they can’t be held fully to fault. \u00a0 These buildings have had hard lives and it shows. Past “fixes” and “updates” by previous owners often do more damage than good. \u00a0Restoration is a tricky proposition, requiring vast sums of money to do properly. \u00a0Look at the recent Mills Building restoration, this was the second time its been done and required a complete gutting to get it right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Contrast that to the Caples building remodel, which as been stalled forever and will likely never get done by the current owner.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Let’s hope that we don’t continue down the demolition path, erasing what history we have left. \u00a0Downtown El Paso has lots worth saving and we must find the right mix of restore and reuse or we will wind up with parking lots everywhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

More pics on flickr: Demolition Time<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another year and another series of downtown buildings are set to be razed. \u00a0 After decades of little activity downtown, it seems like there are reports of buildings being demoed every few months or so. Whether by accident(?)\u00a0or in the name of progress, even our city hall\u00a0has come down. \u00a0In almost all of the instances, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[242,239,231,10,232,241,240],"class_list":["post-1314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-ramblings","tag-caples","tag-demolition","tag-dwntwnep","tag-el-paso","tag-itsallgoodep","tag-mills","tag-river-oaks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1MdZY-lc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1315,"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314\/revisions\/1315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rust2.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}