LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

And we wonder why

Posted

To the editor:

Passersby may have noticed the new AutoZone store on West 234th Street and Broadway. The ugly gray-and-orange building is an affront to the dignity of our shared public space. Its longest dimension, on a stretch of Broadway that bustles with pedestrians, is windowless, like a maximum-security prison.

The city’s as-of-right zoning laws are partially to blame. But I wonder if Community Board 8 and our local politicians also deserve some of the blame. Would such a monstrosity have been built in a more affluent (part of the) neighborhood?

Perhaps when the auto parts store was undergoing design approval, our officials were distracted, too busy decrying the new residential building one block up Broadway. Not because the building is poorly designed, mind you, but because the plan was for it to house formerly homeless New Yorkers.

That building, 5731 Broadway, has turned out to be a valuable addition to our neighborhood and its businesses. How many years will we be stuck with that ugly new gray-and-orange building at Broadway and West 234th, depressing the property values of everything around it?

I’m reminded of the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai’s poem “Tourists,” in which the poet — sitting on a step near the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City — becomes the “point of reference” for a tourist guide who tells his group, “You see that man over there with the baskets? A little to the right of his head, there’s an arch from the Roman period,” to which the poet muses, “Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period? It doesn’t matter, but near it, a little to the left and then down the bit, there’s a man who has just bought fruits and vegetables for his family.”

Jeffrey Otto

Jeffrey Otto,

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