Posted by: Noel Jones
Those of us (I imagine, everybody) who is sick of seeing the Pomeroy Building stand as a castle of blight in the center of Downtown for the last four years, will be relieved to know that new developers, on limited funding, have struck a deal with the City of Easton and have agreed to cut the building in half, and renovate the front half that faces the street. This is great news, which you can read about in Ed Sieger's Express-Times article.
By comparison, Brett Michael Dykes of Yahoo Weekend Report reports that Chinese workers have figured out how to build a 15-story hotel in six days. A sustainable building, able to handle a 9.0 earthquake. No workers were hurt in this building blitz. Watch the video above--it's pretty amazing.
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6 comments:
am i the only person who finds this video jaw-dropping?
we're talking a GREEN building, built to withstand a 9.0 earthquake, built round the clock in 6 days, with no workers injured in the process.
apparently part of the ingenuity involved was that all of the large pieces were pre-fab off site, and then assembled on site with people and cranes.
one thing i did not notice anywhere in this video, was one guy working while four or five stand around and watch because of union rules. everyone is working in this video, and they seem healthy and excited about what they're accomplishing.
i really would like to see America get her competitive spirit of ingenuity back.
while the Chinese are notorious for building dangerously shoddy structures (as evidenced in the last big earthquake where it was revealed that buildings were not only not earthquake proof, but built with cement without rebar) we're talking about a building that documented its construction and claims to be able to sustain a 9.0--that's either incredibly, or it's not true, but i doubt that it's untrue, because anyone could slow down the video and see how they are going about it.
You talk about waiting four years for Pomeroy's? I've been at this for 24 years. I worked on surveying and drawing the existing building when I worked for The Architectural Studio in the 80's - and it had already been empty for years.
Ahhh, George Swytlick...bum of the decade award. Hope he enjoyed prison.
DRL
that's awful! i was giving the benefit of the doubt by only counting the years that i've been here, assuming that it must have been gutted right before i came... if it's been sitting there for 24 years that it a travesty--how has the public tolerated it for so long?
a couple of neighbors told me yesterday, as i was pulling my canvas shopping bags out of the car, that a report has just come out that most of these bags are made in China and contain lead.
then another friend told me that China is withholding certain mined ores from the market to drive up their value and manipulate the global market.
but they built a green earthquake proof hotel in 6 days--i swear--i don't know whether to curse them or cheer for them sometimes.
China is a dicotomy. They give with one hand and take away with the other. They show amazing vision (100's of miles of high speed rail in less than a decade) and then absolute blindness (devastation of the Three Gorges Dam project).
They seem now to be eating our lunch economically but the "butterfly flapping it's wings" effect will not be kind to them. Their issues of resource accessibility/hoarding are accurate. They hold 80-90% of the rare earth minerlas needed for most of the tech and alt energy products we can't live without and they have frozen most of it's export in their own national interests.
But they also are a net importer of food and their heavy-handed treatment of foreign affairs is making them a hated nation in and around southest Asia.
How long their ride at the top continues is anyone's guess but their massive ecological problems (air pollution, water scarcity, millions of unhappy rural dwellers, etc) combined with their eagerness to adopt the western, automobile slum mentallity will nail them hard when it ends.
I compare China to the last group of kids arriving at the frat party. They are going to want to have as much fun as everyone else did and be jealous that their time is short but they missed the boat and the keg is almost empty...tough shit, end of story.
DRL
I like the frat party analogy--I would add one thing--they are the ones who loaned the hosting frat boys the money for all the beer, and were happy to do it as long as they were invited, but when the party ends too quickly, they are going to want their money back.
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