This has been a highly contentious structure, and the July quake and a recent Environment Court ruling on its owner's intention to demolish its well-under-code structure means the controversy won't go away. Given the astronomically high cost of strengthening it, its owner (having paid hundreds of thousands in legal fees fighting his case already) has all but walked away from it, saying he'll leave it to nature to demolish the structure through neglect. On a day like today with gale force winds in the Capital and grey, wet weather making the building facade look even grimier and unkempt, his vision of a grand old dame of the Golden Mile falling to rack and ruin seems to be happening already.
So this is my doodle of the day; a modest building in Chicago Gothic style slowly bringing some of the wilderness back into an urban space. I won't over-romanticise it - it's a terrible situation which could (god forbid) one day kill somebody. let's hope it never comes to that.
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