A new Pratt"We have 30- to 40-year-old infrastructure on Pratt Street. It's looking dated. We have to continue to create a fresh and inviting experience in order to keep attracting employees and tourists and residents. If we allow Pratt Street to stagnate in certain blocks, it's going to have repercussions for the rest of the city center."This city can be so stupid sometimes.
Now mind you, the stuff they want to raze isn't exactly historical, or even attractive. But the concept of downtown in a city looking dated is just dumb. Of course it looks dated. It needs to. Some structures need to look dated, and eventually become part of the landscape as new things are added on.
The ostensible center of this city is continually being treated like a strip mall to be overhauled, razed and reconstructed to entice trite and mundane commerce to do business there. These businesses will ultimately lose interest or fail, and eventually the city will want to overhaul again.
I like the sky-walk. Tourists and pedestrians enjoy it. Razing it to try and force them to patronize the (crappy) businesses below is patronizing, wasteful and inconsiderate. Which is what Sheila Dixon and her posse seem to be all about.
True progress in a city takes time and growth. It seems like Baltimore is so ashamed of itself it has to get rid of everything old to try and be new. That is not how you make a great city. The new structures on Pratt will no doubt be visual abominations just like the crappy hotel that obstructs the view of our Bromo Seltzer tower.
I'm sick of these corporations and city hall trying to turn Baltimore into a transient commercial novelty.
