To the Editor:
I live on a block adjoining the one with the ramshackle building which once housed the Carver Nursery School. Were this building truly worthy of preservation, would not many people have stepped forward long ago, when the building housed an alcoholic beverage-serving establishment widely regarded as a community nuisance, to foster its preservation? As a then new neighborhood resident, attending the hearing where demolishing this building was first addressed only by the coincidence of being there for another docket item closer to my house, I was startled by the strong contingent of nearby residents supporting tearing the building down and replacing it with a small-scale development by a micro-developer who lives in the neighborhood.
Tilting at windmills over preserving buildings of dubious historic merit detracts credibility from the main matter at hand — saving our waterfront from city hall’s waterfront plan for which city hall now believes it has the requisite six-vote supermajority.
The strong neighborhood contingent favoring replacing the former Carver Nursery School, situated in the center of the Durant Center voting precinct, with a nice, low-scale development may explain why the Durant Center precinct went against the waterfront pro-preservation candidate by about the same margin as citywide, even though it adjoins the city hall voting precinct, which went strong for waterfront pro-preservation candidate. Elections have consequences (and in my estimate the last local election had unfortunate ones). But an insurgency against the political establishment in a one-party town has to wisely choose its battles.
Dino Drudi
Alexandria