Old Buildings Don't Feed Hungry People

I don't know about you but I'm stoked about the new 55,000-square-foot ShopRite opening up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Yes, there's been a snag that seems to be as big as an anchor holding down the forward momentum of development of all of Admirals Row. But a couple of old buildings, whether or not they're ultimately preserved in the National Register of Historic Places, isn't going to change, much less halt, the winds of change going on in the Navy Yard. Old buildings don't feed hungry people!

Clinton Hill is starved for a full service supermarket, and has been for years. As long as the neighborhood has needed a supermarket, that's still many years less than how long the couple of old buildings that the federal government wants to ensure is preserved and placed on the NRHP have been neglected-30 years. How much sense would it make to keep a supermarket from being built because old buildings that have been neglected for decades can't be preserved? History can be interesting, but sometimes history is just that...history. It doesn't matter if the federal government gets the two old buildings placed on the National Register of Historic Places; old buildings don't feed hungry people. The supermarket will get built.

Marc Santora, The Struggle to Preserve the Brooklyn Navy Yard, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/realestate/16row.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=he Struggle to Preserve the Brooklyn Navy Yard&st=cse