As a rule, I'd rather preserve than destroy, especially since Minneapolis has leveled so much of its history that it's a miracle the Foshay wasn't knocked down and replaced with a four-story indoor shopping mall. But it'll generate more taxes! And maybe have a Chili's! Right.
Perhaps you recall the Conservatory -- a marble warren of upscale shops so confusing to navigate that when they knocked it down they found 42 skeletons with Banana Republic bags. In order to erect that mausoleum, they took down a row of buildings that looked old and ordinary, but were a perfect example of the diverse streetscape that gave downtown character and historical perspective. Ah, well: There's plenty more where that came from.
When the next block of senior citizens was razed for something else, same shrug: Time marches on. After a while, the downtown is new and shiny, but the history's gone. Pictures of downtown today compared to 50 years ago make you wonder if our sister city was Dresden.
Not everything can be saved. Not everything should be saved. But we should value items that don't seem historical in the usual brick-and-stone-and-columns genre. Sometimes there's a gem of modernism we don't recognize because it looks, well, modern, and that stuff can't be historic. But it is. And so I must announce a new preservation campaign, complete with Facebook page.
We must save the Nicollet Avenue Kmart.
Head fake! You thought I was going to throw myself in front of the efforts to demolish Peavey Plaza outside Orchestra Hall. Its supporters note that it's a unique example of modernism, and that's so. But the Nicollet Kmart is also modernism in its fullest flower -- the architecture itself is nothing special, but the ideas behind it were so misguided, and so typical of its times, that it has to be kept around as an example of what not to do again. Ever. Anywhere.
Back then, developers and planners had simple answers for complex problems. So you have a busy, vibrant commercial street in the heart of the city? We can solve that. Destroy the buildings that line the street, create a vast asphalt desert that broils you alive in July and feels like the steppes of Kamchatka in December, place the store far from the street, and make the pedestrian feel as comfortable as a squirrel in a bumper-car attraction. But since the project was designed as an equal-opportunity festival of inconvenience, they plopped it in the middle of Nicollet, blocked the street, routed traffic around it. Genius. Should have put huge trash cans in the middle of the store's exits, too.
The mayor wants Nicollet reopened; bravo. But there's another preservation fight over another modern landmark, Peavey Plaza. It's the big, barren non-lake by Orchestra Hall.
