Today's Update

Crews started in on this 3-bay shotgun at 309 S. Galvez today, preparing it for a move.

Wally Thurman stopped by S. Tonti Street to check up on his house.  The house across the street and the house next door, 223 S. Tonti, (blue, below) were both being prepared for moving.

Crews also continued work today on this house at 2326 Palmyra Street.

Farther down the street, the house at 2224 Palmyra was also being prepared for moving.

The final development, pictured below, is perhaps the most interesting of the day.  Handbills appeared on doorknobs throughout the VA Footprint announcing "A new BioScience District is coming to your area."

 'What does this mean for you?', it asks rhetorically, answering in part with a "revitalized Mid-City."

What it doesn't mention - and what makes it rather creepy and disturbing - is that the GNOBEDD plans, in their vision of a "revitalized Mid-City", would require the demolition and destruction of much of Mid-City as we know it - and not just Lower Mid-City.  Thus, the placement of these disingenuous fliers really is quite a final salt-in-the-wounds insult to the people that remain inside the VA Footprint.

Like the hospitals project, the 1,500-acre BioDistrict is not a wonderful, benevolent stranger to invite into the neighborhood.  The euphemistic language hides the fact that the development of the BioDistrict with its claims of a "land bank" require neglecting to mention that thousands of people live in hundreds of historic homes in the enormous footprint for the proposed project.

It's unfortunate that I have to warn against GNOBEDD.  Usually, I'd be welcoming this sort of development.  I would have no problem if it was trying to redevelop the many vacant skyscrapers in the CBD.  Usually I would see its push for high paying jobs as a plus.

But then again, usually the powers that be would not be quite as brazen in their disregard for the irreplaceable historic communities at the heart of their metropolitan region.  Usually they'd be a little more savvy and a little less cunning.

ADDED: Last evening, I had a chance to look at the GNOBEDD AECOM Draft, a study of the Biodistrict.  To substantiate my assertion above about the likely damage to Mid-City, here's a screen shot near the end of the report that hints at the desire for a sizable land grab:

The fact that there's a district at all begs the question - why not simply trumpet the existing health and science nodes at either end?  Combine that with regret over the lack of eminent domain authority, and it's difficult to see how existing Mid-City neighborhoods - in the Mid-City National Register Historic District - aren't the largely unspoken target.

The report also notes the many vacancies in both major structures and land in the historic Medical District in the CBD.  That, too, begs the question - why the need for a district expanding out into Mid-City when there are so many possibilities in the existing Medical District in the CBD?  Here's a look at the working paper: