HERITAGE HOUSE APARTMENTS monument to Greensboro's legacy of STUPIDITY!

So what ever happened to the rosy architectural drawings, and promotional piece in the News & Record describing how some brainy re-developer from paradise had spectacular plans to convert the big building on West Meadowview road into affordable condominiums for students, disabled and low income buyers.  Amenities were to include a "FOOD COURT" and landscaping bla bla bla.  Yeah right. 

 I took a drive by the place a few years after all this was announced and the only obvious external changes to be seen were poor quality, crude repaving patches, newer fences and so on.   At one time I had actually considered making a "statement" against suburbia by moving from lake Daniel to this complex because it reminded me of a place I had lived previously in New York City with similar architecture, it felt secure in violent weather AND because it had been my late Mother's first "stop" in her ten year institutional odyssey of various assisted living communities when it was then named Village Green and managed by the City of Greensboro.   

Anyway when I saw the news today of how nasty the place has become and what a total failure it was as a condo or rental apartment complex so much so that it's being VACATED yet again by the same stupid CITY of GREENSBORO that ok'd it's last several incarnations.  When I saw this It occured to me but apparently NEVER to the City of Bone Brains that this complex WAS A FAILURE FROM DAY UNO.   

1) It failed as a hotel because it was sited in an area which quickly became a low income wasteland book ended by industrial parks to the South and a dismal avenue to nowhere going North.  (poor planning)   2) It failed as an assisted living complex because it's idiotic, highly inefficient design made it too expensive to operate profitably with modest rents and was very poorly suited to elderly, disabled and infirm residents due to it's very long corridors with only one elevator bank (2) at the far end of the "L" shaped wings.  The fact that the City's "miracle worker" developer made NO changes to this most obvious design flaw should have tipped off the City council from the beginning!  

But of course the chronically brain-dead government body was CLUELESS (as usual) until now!  Failure to totally redesign this large building most likely sealed it's fate because the vast corridors, fire stair towers, poor sight lines, dead ends far from elevators etc. could only serve the needs of loiterers, criminals, dope dealers and rowdy youths just as similar ones did in the now discredited urban "PROJECTS" coast to coast.  And so it goes,  incarnation #3 "Heritage House" Condos is also a spectacular failure of - The building DESIGNED TO FAIL.  

More FREE ADVICE to the eternally CLUELESS City of Greensboro:   Don't try to rebrand and repopulate this monstrosity with out 1) adding TWO more elevator banks.  Shortening corridors, move the main entrance to the CENTER of the two wings not the far end as it is now.  Redesign all systems to make the building both SMART to operate and SECURE to live in.   

OR ...... 

 DON'T DO ANY RETROFITTING AT ALL.  Since this building is poorly sited in general and HIGHLY unlikely to attract any but the poorest, most desperate people it is VERY UNLIKELY to be profitable for ANY FUTURE USE as a free market residential complex of any sort (short of a low- security prison or jail?)   

So why not JUST DEMOLISH IT and try to re-purpose/salvage the major structural concrete pre-fab elements? Thus adding ONE MORE GORGEOUS VACANT LOT to Greensboro's VAST INVENTORY of GORGEOUS VACANT LOTS for which it takes so much pride !!