I’d like to tell you about a building I’ve never been in. It is a building you’ve never heard of, most probably. You won’t care at all, until you do, but that’s my job here.
This building was erected in the 1960s as an off-campus dormitory. It had an indoor pool. It wasn’t considered very attractive, even in the 1960s. (I KNOW!) Derisively, it has been called a project of Bland & Boring Architecture Inc., which is a firm that probably doesn’t exist by that name. And if someone is using that, they should change it, posthaste.
Anyway, this place failed as a residence hall, all 150,000 sq. ft. of it. And then it failed as a sorority house. All of this is odd because the only thing more under pressure in a college town than parking spaces are living arrangements. You can be sure that truism goes back generations. And yet, here’s the Poplars Building. Failing as a place to live, it became a research and conference center, and this town’s first premium hotel. We’re in the 1970s now, and the promotional material promises a bufeteria. And I know what you’re thinking.
Bufeteria? Did Elvis stay there?
Yes he did, in 1974.
Fans stood in the alley behind the hotel, after one of his two shows here, but they were once again disappointed by the Poplars, and by the rock star. He skipped out after one night, when he was apparently scheduled for two. We can’t say, here, that this is why the hotel concept fizzled, but there’s certainly a correlation.
When the hotel was on it’s last legs the university took on Poplars and turned it briefly into an academic unit, and then used it as administrative offices. The pool was filled in and became Human Resources. Some 400 people could work in Poplars.
Now, it is coming down. This is from a story from last October.
“We might be out by the end of the month or the end of November,” says Tom Morrison, vice president of capital planning and facilities. “We do intend to demolish it, probably starting before the end of the calendar year. We haven’t bid that yet but that’s coming up soon.
“Rest assured we’re not going to implode it.”
That piece goes on to discuss the aging building, how, because it was a hotel, offices became mini-suites with private restrooms. That seems like a really great perk, but it also discusses how that became a detriment, and some other details. But, now, 10 months removed from that copy I can tell you two things. They are out of the building, and Morrison was correct: Poplars isn’t being imploded.
It is, starting today, being scraped to death.
This was at 9 a.m. this morning.
And at 10 a.m., they were making a bit of progress.
This is just a block away, so I can take these pictures, like this one, at the end of the day, with ease.
Who knows how long it will take. And no one knows, yet, what will go in it’s place. The current plan seems to be a green space, which would be nice, but that might also be a placeholder until a specific need presents itself. The biggest need is the parking deck next door. That’s been closed since early summer for much-needed maintenance work, and that parking deck is much needed, because parking is always in short supply in a college town.
Residential buildings are too, here, but that’s an entirely different and less interesting town-and-gown conversation full of predictable quotes.
Rather than fill your time with that sort of thing, I’ll try to provide some daily updates on the progress of the de-Poplarization going on nearby.
And this evening, we hit the road. Maybe you know where we’re going. Probably you don’t. It really comes down to how closely you’ve been paying attention to all of the platforms. Allllll of the platforms and, probably, whether, you’ve used Google with that in mind to try to determine the answer to this mystery which you didn’t know I was springing on you until just this moment.
I really should work on building the suspense a bit more, I know. There’s only so much time in the day, though, and all of these platforms need very subtle, sly, programmatically specific content.
So here’s your hint … we passed these along the way.
If you’re good you at least have a direction now.
If you don’t have this particularly geographical frame of reference (and I didn’t until earlier this year, so no fault will be found) just keep up with a few of these other places over the next few days. Content there will help flesh out the particulars. There’s always more on Twitter and big clues will also be found on Instagram, too. Of course, this will also be resolved tomorrow, so you could just wait here and refresh this page …
I really should work on building the suspense more.
