Exit133

August 28, 2006 · Derek

Voelpel on Crosswater Condos

Dan Voelpel’s latest column is about the Crosswater condo project.  The latest, and apparently final, court fight against the Crosswater Condo development on the east side of the Foss appears to be over.  The cost of the fight for the developer, the port, the city, and the rest of us will never be fully measured.  Few projects seem to bring out as much passion as this one.  Can industry and residents live together?  A lot of bridges were burned answering that question.  I’m still pissed that folks tried to tie Murray Morgan Bridge redevelopment to this project.  Will this ‘win’ mean we’ll see condos soon?  We’ll see.

Link to The News Tribune

Previously on Exit133 here and here

Update: Here’s a visual display of what’s been sold and what’s still available in the Crosswater.

2 comments

  • RR Anderson January 4, 2011

    the black slime raining down from the military transport ships is odious

  • RR Anderson January 4, 2011

    from my friend the JinxMedic:

    “Complete lack of state funding is why there have been no significant travelling exhibits at the musem, and this same lack of funding is why the museum itself is in disrepair- although it is a rather new building. Museums always take the cuts in this state, which is a major reason why I am no longer in that career field. No job security. (Or as my mentor in the field once said, “There’s no future in history”.)

    To get the dangling carrot of American Association of Museums (AAM) accreditation, most US public museums in the past twenty years have been forced to go to “storyline” type formats, less reliant on material culture (cool stuff), and more reliant on photos, maps, and recordings. If people wanted to see that, they can get it through books and the internet. Worse yet, AAM standards required that any exhibit having human remains (this means mummies, skeletons- you name it) be removed from display, and also pushed a politically correct theme- firearms collections (such as the WSHS had) were sold off, all loaned items were returned, natural history exhibits were removed, and anything else determined to be “culturally insensitive” (read “native american collections”) was eliminated.

    That left most museums with nothing interesting remaining. What AAM never understood, was that the things they deemed “insensitive” were the kinds of things that people went to museums to see. Not a collection of photos – you can get that more effectively in a history book. Not mannequins painted monochromatic colors- Nordstrom’s has that. Recordings of voices? Internet. Television. Movies.

    I predicted this course of events when the transition to an AAM storyline model by the WSHS was first discussed, and did my best to save as much material culture as I could to be incorporated in to the upcoming storyline. Of course, it was not enough – and so we are left with a general run-down sterility.”

    and….

    “The WSHS museum was far more interesting when it still had an amazingly eclectic collection of material culture. The current museum is better located and more effectively tells a storyline of state history, but we certainly do miss our old mummy, Ankh Unnofi…”

    and…

    “Support the museum as it stands now, and encourage private funding to secure interesting travelling exhibits, such as the Smithsonian’s “Magnificent Voyagers”, which was successfully run at WSHS’s old Stadium Way facility in 1987. Good travelling exhibits always attract visitors, but they can be expensive to host. The WSHM building on Pacific Avenue was specifically designed to host these types of exhibits, providing proper environmental control, overall improved facility security, and ease of access by the public.

    After we get a few “big ticket” travelling exhibits under our belt (think along the lines of “Tutenkhamen”), perhaps then we can discuss abandoning (or at least modifying) the “storyline model”, and go back to having interesting material culture on permanent display.

    This can be done by bringing out what remains in custodial storage on site (and at other state facilities), and once again utilizing the option of long-term loans. People are more likely to offer items on long-term or permanent loan than donation and remember that current AAM practice discourages loans when knowing that an outright donation may one day be sold off according to flucuations in what’s popular with current museum management models, donors are less likely to donate. Donors take the concept of “in perpetuity” seriously, imagine that.

    There is a place for a state history storyline, and it does belong at the WSHM. However, people want to see interesting things, which is lacking at the current facility. This can be done, in part, by bringing back long-term loans of material culture.

    And getting rid of the fence.”

    thanks to Marty for at least going on record against the business retarding anti-pedestrian WSHM fence