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Comment by dbreunig | Hacker News Reader

You know what means more to a community? Affordable housing.

The old Sears catalog distribution warehouse in Dallas was converted to multi-family housing. As part of the agreement with the city, it is required to offer a certain number of units as Section 8. They don't advertise this, and most people don't know it. It's just part of the games developers/owners play.

To add to the exploring old buildings part of this thread, this converted building has lots of space for this. There is a basement, and then a sub-basement. The original warehouse was powered by DC, and the generators were located in this sub-basement. These things were huge. So large, that in order to remove them, they had to be cut into pieces. The building had been expanded, with the new addition being made into an actual retail Sears store. They had 2 underground floors, and being a show room had terrazzo flooring. These underground floors have now been converted into parking which totally hides the design of the terrazzo, and very few people even look at the floor of a parking garage to even notice.

Or just housing. Or maybe a park or school. Or hospital. Is an abandoned theater really the most socially beneficial use of some piece of land? Actually in some cases maybe it is. But not very often.

"Despite setbacks and heartaches, major construction on the Lansdowne Theater finally began in 2023, and it is expected to reopen as a concert venue in fall 2024. Matt Schultz projects that the restored theater will attract 100,000 visitors yearly, spurring millions of dollars in business growth, tax revenue, jobs, and investment."

(The headline is a bit misleading. Most of the article is about efforts to revitalize the theater.)

If someone or some group wants to buy an old theater and try to revitalize it, fine. But if someone wants to buy it and tear it down and build apartments, or convert the space into a restaurant or something else, that should be fine too. Most local theaters are not historically significant, they are just old.

I don't think I wrote anything different. I would need considerable convincing that an abandoned theater should be left to rot empty because no developer wants to faithfully restore it as a theater as opposed to building something else there.

In this case, someone did eventually undertake restoring it so it's not actually abandoned.

Living in Philly, I can pretty confidently say there’s a 0% chance a theater in Lansdowne, even a nicely restored, historical, theater, will attract 100000 visitors in a year.

Oh, I'd expect the person whose baby this is would be over-optimistic. But I'll still maintain that a restored downtown concert space with some historical significance isn't a bad thing.

Agreed. I definitely came off a bit cynical. We just have an abundance of exceptional performance spaces in Philly and the nearby suburbs. Hopefully, this is a benefit to Lansdowne.

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