Boxes, boxes, and more boxes!

What is it with the architects who have been building apartment buildings in the downtown area lately? They seem to have their imaginations trapped in a box, and that's what they have been producing. From Smallwood to Lofts On College, all they have been building have been big, ugly boxes. My "favorite" box is the one on 11^th St. just east of Morton with the most hideous green doors I have ever seen.

And now developer Jim Regester wants to build yet another box on the corner of Kirkwood and Washington. He claims that the facade of the building will fit in with the style of the downtown landscape. HOGWASH!! The buildings immediately to the west of it, the Buskirk/Chumley Theater, the Odd Fellows building (built, I believe, during the 1920's), and the Allen Building (built in 1907 according to a plaque on its outside wall), are all beautifully shaped and are true representations of early 20^th Century architecture - not this eye-sore-to-be.

Perhaps they should take a lesson from the IU architects who always seem to build beautiful buildings, including the just-finished Hutton Honors College building. Heck, they even made a freaking parking garage look nice!

I sincerely hope that the City Plan Commission, which is scheduled to take discuss the development this evening, will say enough is enough and insist that they go back to the drawing board and start thinking outside the box for a change.