Is This as Good as It Gets?

Yesterday, architect and urban designer Matthew Frederick posted on Facebook what he called "two views of my suggested improvements to Stewart's expansion proposal."

Frederick has been following the Stewart's issue for a while. Last month, on his blog Hudson Urbanism, he presented his ideas for making what it seems we must accept more palatable: "One way to stop the Stewart's expansion and six ways to make it better." I will acknowledge without hesitation that Frederick's drawings show something better than anything Stewart's has in mind for that corner, and it no doubt is as good as it can get, but it is still, by its sheer size and vast expanse of asphalt, disturbingly out of character with the neighborhood and out of character with the city and the image it endeavors to present. One wonders if those elected officials who worked to amend the zoning to accommodate Stewart's had any vision of what the expansion would actually look like when they concluded that giving in to Stewart's was "the best outcome for our community given a set of hard circumstances."
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