One afternoon last week, I spent some time wandering around the outside of the Savannah Pharmacy building on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.
If you’ve been following the news, you already know the city of Savannah purchased the structure several years ago to renovate as office space for the Department of Economic Development and related agencies.
But, after discovering that the building was fundamentally unsound, the city opted a few months ago to demolish the current structure and commission a replica of it. Renovating the existing structure was estimated at more than $4 million, while demolishing it and building a replica would cost almost $3 million.
Both options seem ridiculously expensive for a building that has less than 4,000 square feet.
So what now? Let’s consider a few issues in a little more detail.
The mid-20th century building is on the east side of MLK near the intersection of Waldburg Street.
There are a few businesses in the immediate vicinity, but there are under-utilized parcels nearby too. Public housing is across the street.
The building is on one of those maddening stretches of MLK. If you’re a southbound driver, you can’t turn at Waldburg, so you either have to turn at Gwinnett Street and jog over to Montgomery Street or turn on Park Avenue and loop back around.
That long narrow median of MLK stifles development by inhibiting east-west vehicular access.
And that portion of the boulevard is also unfriendly to bicyclists and pedestrians.
When I decided to cross MLK to get a longer view of the controversial building, I would have had to walk a couple of blocks to find a crosswalk. So I ended up jogging across two travel lanes, pausing on the slip of a median and then jogging across two more lanes. Not recommended.
The street design actively discourages neighborhood connections and vitality, but I’ll leave further discussion of that issue for a future column.
There has been considerable public consternation about the city’s purchase of the old pharmacy, as well as the purchase of a commercial plaza on Waters Avenue and a handful of other properties.
Some of the complaints seem justified, while others do not.
Local municipalities, including the city of Savannah, got caught up to some degree in the fervor of the real estate bubble.
Individual investors bought the hype that prices would keep going up and jumped into the market at the wrong point. Various business, nonprofits and governments did the same.
Everyone should have known better, or at least would have known better if they had been paying attention to market data.
But that doesn’t mean city officials erred in their purchase of the old pharmacy, which is arguably worth preserving for its cultural, historical and architectural significance.
And consider that government bureaucracies will almost certainly need to expand in response to a growing population, increased tourism and surging private investment.
If we are going to need more local government office space, why not make those investments in struggling corridors where the land is relatively cheap and the new investment can further revitalization efforts?
Whether you agree with me about those points, we’re still faced with the simple fact the city has an expensive problem on its hands.
The building’s fate is in limbo at this point, although demolition still seems the most likely outcome.
But a number of architects who have been commenting on the project on social media seem unconvinced that restoration should be so difficult or so costly. After all, the estimated cost of stabilization and renovation comes to more than $1,000 per square foot.
Isn’t there a way to preserve significant portions of the structure for less than that?
And if the building is in fact completely unsalvageable, should we rebuild a replica of it?
I’m going to answer “no” to that second question.
If we build a replica, everyone will know that the new structure is inauthentic, and it’s highly unlikely that a copycat structure would truly meet the needs of the offices housed there.
We should be able to build something more dynamic and more appropriate for considerably less than the estimated cost of creating a weak replica.
But these are complex issues and difficult questions. There is ample room for debate and disagreement.
While I often get frustrated about the slow pace of city bureaucracy, this seems like a situation that needs more study and more deliberation.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32ndSt., Savannah, Ga. 31401.