The Observation Deck

Lakewood city hall, should not allow, not one more demolition of any original historic commercial building within the Lakewood community. If some business wants the property, they must make the most of, with what they have, do what you can to the inside, make it work for you, but the outside can only be improved, IMPROVED.

Of all the properties that have been demolished, all along Detroit and Madison Avenue's, It's like decimating your grandparents legacy, their tomb stones, who would do that? For a drug store? really... The schools they saved in Lakewood are gorgeous, they will be here forever, a tribute, to Lakewood. They should have saved Lakewood High School front façade, historic..... Since 1923 or so, Lakewood residents have graduated from there, fell in love, got laid, what a memory, if only, they would have saved the façade.

In 1964, my family moved from a little single family home in Garfield Hts, with two acres of woods, to an 2nd floor commercial apartment, on Lorain Ave. between Fulton and W. 38th St. Above Walt's Friendly Tavern, 10 rooms, for $70.00 a month. The block had a Rexall Drugstore on the corner of Fulton and Lorain, then a dry cleaners, then Walt's Bar, we lived upstairs, next a hardware store, then an eatery, Johnson's Bar B Q . All gone, now it's the old "Hollywood" video empty place, were they want to build a McDonalds? Progress?

All around the neighborhood, there were two, three and four story buildings, with stores down, and apartments up. Quaint, cozy, charming by today's standards. Isn't that what they developed in Crocker Park? All gone, I don't recognize the neighborhood anymore. All of our Lakewood homes are from the same era, were not tearing them down, were improving them, why are we allowing the destruction of our historic commercial icons?

Personally I think this is an underappreciated issue. But that's relative; ultimately it depends on what the community actually wants.

To me, our two corridors substantially lined with shop windows, in 100-year-old multi-story buildings, are an essential part of what makes this Lakewood and not one of dozens of (from my perspective) comparatively interchangeable suburbs around the region. There's a sense of a real, right-here place in walking through this kind of urban space, which I think is absent when the engaging, human features of doors and windows are replaced by single-story chain retail. You find yourself on a thin strip between a paved corridor for cars and a paved parking space for cars. When this predominates there is, pardon the expression, "no 'there' there" any longer.

I do find it regrettable, then, that this seems like an element of Lakewood that is disappearing. It's disappearing slowly, to be certain, but the process also seems one-way. There's nothing particularly mysterious that the "lives" of these buildings end, here and there; very possibly more could be done to prevent this, but it's unlikely that we will make all of them last forever. What seems like the bigger challenge to me is that they don't get replaced. I'm not entirely sure why; I get the impression that the market is uninterested in them, except as a kind of novelty in very limited, special circumstances (see below).

In any event, in the past several years we have lost at least two, one of which is now a drive-through chain restaurant and the other of which is currently a weedy lot. It seems likely that Hilliard Square will join them. Next to this, the Historical Society might be credited with saving one. It is not my place to criticize the people doing the most, and as noted I think preservation alone can't provide a complete answer anyway—but the trend seems plain.

Which, again, I find regrettable. But maybe this is a minority concern. Maybe this feature of Lakewood holds no significance for most residents, or maybe the likely outcome of its very gradual erosion simply seems too distant, or maybe it just seems one more thing that can only be borne and not changed. I don't know.

jackie f taylor wrote:Isn't that what they developed in Crocker Park?

It is certainly one of the features I find particularly novel about the ongoing conflicts, in our city, that there should be an apparently intense and durable desire to build some sort of miniature Crocker Park in Lakewood… given that Crocker Park strikes me as essentially a Disneyland imitation of the real environment already existing here, some part of which would have to be leveled if the Crocker-Park-Lakewood dream is ever to be realized.

But that, too, may just be me.

(Contextual note: I have always lived above one or another Madison Avenue shopfront during my years in our fair city.)

The new housing units are on West Clifton are ugly. They do not fit in any way. How does City Hall allow these to be built?

I agree Jim, it's like placing George Jetson's home in Fred Flintstones "Bedrock" neighborhood.