LJ-World Rant of the Week

We love the continuing series of LJ-World articles about Doug Compton "stealing the sun" with his seven-story building across from the Pig and the potential six-story hotel complex likely to go up just across from it.

Here's a furious LJ-World talkbacker named Swan_Diver considering the implications of the new building:

"This proposed monstrosity represents nothing less than the on-going rape of an important national historic site, related to the epic conflict of the American Civil War. The building has absolutely nothing to offer this cultural legacy, which has been designed for a vacuum. Its bought-and-paid-for 'architects' understand that they can vulgarly thumb their noses at Lawrence's history and heritage, it's toothless Historic Resources Commission, powerless and ineffective Historic Resources 'Coordinator,' and so-called 'Downtown Design Guidelines.'

Dozens of men, some as young as teens, died at the hands of the mass-murderers from Jackson County, Missouri, on the morning of the Lawrence Massacre of August, 1863 -- in the two-hundred yards surrounding this site. This irrelevant mass of thoughtless hubris will serve only to desecrate their sacrifices, and further erase the physical context of the era in which this community was born.

Furthermore -- you definitely won't see see such development proposals for the west side of downtown, along Vermont. These new high-rises will be exclusively reserved for Lawrence's east side, where the race and social and economic class of its residents can continue to be denigrated and ignored by wholly-unrepresentative officials seated at the poorly-designed and outmoded City Hall at 6th and Massachusetts."

Chip: Swan_Diver must not realize that this building is slated to have a rooftop pool. It's imperative that Larryville be able to compete with KC's rooftop pool at The Jones, a place where, according to my best research, every day looks like this: