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Where Is Public Input On VCU's Growth?
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Friday, December 16, 2005
Editor, Times-Dispatch: I was very interested in the announcement of a new VCU hospital facility between 10th and 11th Streets on Broad Street. Hardly a week goes by without the trumpeting of a new breathtakingly large VCU building.
Curiously, I never read of any input by the public about the appearance or location of these structures. This despite the fact they are public buildings, paid for by the taxpayers, on property owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Our supply of grand, distinctive, and eminently reusable buildings in this city is disappearing in VCU President Eugene Trani's campaign to turn Richmond into another nameless, faceless American nonentity.
It is especially galling that the irrevocable loss of this building stock is apparently driven by bureaucrats with little or no oversight from the people who pay them. This is a dreadful trend, and our streets are shadowed by the inane and forgettable architecture that is the unfortunate result of this lack of oversight and comment.
The idea that the proposed hospital should have its rear parking deck facing Broad Street and the front on Marshall Street is an architectural affront beyond endurance. Turning the hospital's backside to Broad Street -- Richmond's premier avenue and main thoroughfare -- sends the message that VCU will do as it pleases, and consume our city in the process. Selden Richardson. richmond.