City Blows it on K Street – AGAIN

We’ve been following this story for about a year now.

When local boutique Artifacts opened up in the old Toy Room space on K Street, we cheered. Artifacts offers art supplies, clothing, art books and assorted hipster/skateboarder knicknacks. They have also mounted some of the best art shows in the city over the past couple of years.

When the store moved into the space next door to the old Toy Room, they did a great job of remodeling that store- the best part was the sleek wood slat facade that replaced the store’s cheap and crappy ’80s storefront.  While the upgrade wasn’t quite as nice as the Cosmopolitan building at 10th and K, it is the next-best upgrade K Street has seen.

So what does the city do?  Makes them tear it out, of course.  Turns out that the building dates to 1870, and the new facade isn’t within preservation standards.  That would be fine (and in fact we’d be cheering the decision)  IF any part of the original facade was left.  Anyone familiar with K Street knows that the storefront that Artifacts replaced was not even from the 197os, let alone the 1870s.  The damage was done LONG ago.

Did the building owners file the correct permits?  No.   Does that mean that  a blighted strip in the most intensely screwed up region of Downtown should lose one of the most appealing storefronts?   Why is it that the city could not have worked with them to make the best of a bad situation?  When the city is throwing tens of millions of dollars at rehabbing K Street, why is it that they didn’t do what was clearly the best for everyone?

Money.  If we were talking about a multi-million dollar business created by a large developer, the city would not only have worked with them on the permits, they’d have thrown five or ten million city dollars their way to grease the wheels. 

What about the history, you say?  Remember, this is the same city that happily tore down the historic Merriam at 13th and J for a poorly thought out expansion of the convention center, tore down the historic Francesca Building so that the Hyatt would have a view of the Capitol and, best of all, tore down the Gold Rush-era Ebner Building in Old Sac so that a REPLICA could be built in its place.  Why a replica rather than restoring the building?  Because building a replica is cheaper than restoring the real building.  So much for history.

Way to go.