Friday, August 1, 2008

Broadside

This week, the UrbanArt Commission moved its office from Madison and 3rd Street downtown to Broad Avenue, and I'm wondering what, if anything, that means for the neighborhood.

Here's a pic from Weeden Arts Watch.


I've been really interested in Broad Avenue and Binghamton ever since it was chosen as the laboratory for the new unified development code a few years ago.

A friend of mine and I were standing on the street last week, just chatting, and she looked at the buildings and suddenly said, this would be a cool place to live.

On the one hand, there's a new elementary school in Binghamton, a nice parcel of vacant land for redevelopment near East Parkway, and, perhaps most appealing, really good bones.

Broad Avenue has a distinct feel to it, one that seems to me to be pseudo-nostalgic. The scale between the height of the buildings, the width of the sidewalk, and the street seems just about right.

On the other hand, there's the Lester Street murders, last week's gangland shoot-out, and tons of car break-ins (including, but certainly not limited to, at last year's hottie biscotti party for the Flyer's annual Hotties issue).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Binghampton is a strange place. It is by far the worst area on the poplar corridor. Why the city has allowed it to degrade to the state it is in now is beyond me. If the city did target Broad for redevelopment it would have to also do something about the Tilman area just west of Library as well. That area is rough. Binghampton has potential sitting right by Sam Cooper, Overton Park, and the New Library, but there just isn't any jobs for the area residents.