I headed home to Green Bay this past weekend (for free laundry at mi madres, and to visit Biddy in Marinette).As I pulled off the highway from 43 N, I noticed a change in the skyline of boxed buildings around the off-ramp.
Great, more stores.
I understand the need for shopping centers, grocery stores, gas stations and restaurants, but since moving to Green Bay 12 years ago, there's been significant development, turning the once prairie-grassed, isolated suburb into a full out traffic laden, brick-built, strip-malled, pavement landscape.
And every time I go back, there's a new commercial building being built.
When we moved in, there were three buildings -- Lou's One Stop gas station, the Dorsch Ford dealership and Cliff & Ceil's ballroom -- and they were just beginning to build a Hardee's.
BEFORE:
Now, across County JJ, passed the backyard of my mom's house, cookie cutter homes dot the other side of the road. Not to mention, the following businesses in the area:
-four strip malls
-Menards
-Festival Foods (my H.S. job as a cashier)
-a rebuilt Cliff & Ceils
-TWO more gas stations
-Home Depot
-a hotel
-some Harley Davidson repair center
-two banks
-Tumbleweed, McDonalds, Jimmy Johns, Taco Johns, A&W and Subway
And the newest edition, right across the street: Stein Gardens and Gifts.
AFTER:
Do we really need eight different fast food options, three places to get gas and two DIY stores within a half-mile radius?
Wouldn't it make more sense to construct one large building (AKA a mall), with a whole bunch of stores, instead of completely destroying all of the natural land around the highway?
It was inevitable that development would happen, especially with so many people moving into the area. (It is a suburb, after all).
Not to mention the affects of locally owned stores. Mom and pop shops are completely run out by corporations who build 1 mil.-sq.-ft. facilities, undercut prices, then abandon the building. From personal experience, I saw it happen in Stevens Point as they continued building along Hwy. 10 instead of renovating and continuing to develop the downtown area.
So I say, develop and remodel what's already there, instead of continuing to spread like an epidemic.
With the increased traffic, destruction of land, and the overall loss of aesthetics to the area -- it only supports what I've been thinking recently: it makes more sense to live in a more metropolitan area.
Although you're not exactly removing your carbon footprint by living within city limits, at least you have access to mass transit, stores in close proximity, and the option to live and renovate buildings that are already there.
Build up, not out.
4 comments:
You forgot the other bank and ...whatever the Cracked Pot is called now. Also, the modest collection of bars going down that street.
I still say Ol' Bluestone is a better name than Hotlaps...
Well, I also forgot to mention the two churches and YMCA down the street.
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
Dorsch Ford wasn't built until 1995. It opened in July and I was their first customer in the bodyshop after I got my eight=point buck with the Aerostar
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