I will never forgive them for not using real glass here...
Personally, I will never forgive them for thrusting such an urban renewal nightmare looking eyesore on the edge of our otherwise charming downtown - and at
my expense and to the tune of $1,538 per square foot.
$1,538 per square foot. Think about that amount for just a moment.
This thread was started in 2004. Construction started in 2006. You will find postings about concerns about the price raised by various people from at least early 2007.
A
lot has happened in our country and in the world since that time.
According to the FW Weekly article mentioned earlier in this thread, at that time, the average college building in Texas cost $225 per square foot to build while average private construction in downtown ran $300 per square foot.
Let's be generous and take away the $300 amount to determine that TCC overpaid by $1,238 per square foot.
Ask yourself exactly what TCC got for that extra $1,238 and what good it will do for the students who attend its schools or the taxpayers who have to fork over the money to pay the bill.
Think for a moment what
you can buy for $1,238.
Think of all the painful cuts that countless individuals and enterprises have had to make in their spending.
Elsewhere, an entire government of a Western country (Greece) has effectively gone bankrupt with more very likely to follow. The governments of certain US states (for instance, California) teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. Our own Federal government is rapidly rushing down that same path: borrowing and spending enormous sums of money that it does not have, piling up a debt that will either have to be paid back someday by
someone or else defaulted on or inflated away (which is simply an indirect, slower motion and economically devastating form of default). And we are approaching the point where, if it
is to be paid back, the question then becomes whether an economy can function and generate the wealth necessary to pay it back under the crippling burden of the taxes that will eventually need to be collected to retire that debt.
What has put Greece, California and our own Uncle Sam in the position that they are in? Is it not the premise that, somehow, the law of cause and effect need not operate when it comes to economics? Is it not the premise that there is always some sort of Santa Claus out there with bottomless piles of unlimited wealth that can always be confiscated to pay for whatever emotional "good intentions" happen to be dreamed up by whoever happens to be in power and their various constituencies? And when reality eventually sinks in that there is no Santa Claus and that those piles of wealth lusted after from afar turned out
not to be unlimited and are discovered to have, in fact, been exhausted a long time ago - well, look at what is happening in Greece.
Entire segments of the Greek population who were lulled into complete and total dependency on such largess are rioting in the streets demanding the government pay them money that it simply does not have. When they realized the government cannot pay, they demanded that a new Santa Claus be found - and when one was found, they are now rioting over the fact that the new Santa Claus, the German taxpayer, is stingy, mean, heartless and evil because it refuses to match the largess of the old Santa Claus.
Is not the root of the whole mess the premise that "it is" is somehow subordinate to "I want" and not the other way around? Is it not the premise that reality and the law of cause and effect can somehow be nullified and bended by the intensity of people's
intentions,
wishes and
desires? And if reality and the law of cause and effect fails to bend accordingly? Well, it
ought to bend - so someone needs to go out and force somebody to
make it bend.
That is the world that all of us find ourselves in today - a world were all of the Santa Clauses and potential Santa Clauses are either broke or are already being bled dry. It is a world that has been in the making for a very long time but which has become far more apparent and obvious since construction began on the TCC project. It is a situation that will have significant and enduring consequences on every individual alive today and on every enterprise and institution. That is the backdrop against which that $1,238 per square foot must now be measured.
To give credit where it is due, at least TCC did not pile up large, unsustainable debt. But that does not let them off the hook of regarding Tarrant County taxpayers as being a Santa Clause to be exploited for whatever whim or fancy that happens to strike them.
Fortunately, governmental bodies in our part of the country tend to behave more responsibly and tend to have a better grasp of elementary economic reality. As a result, they are doing what individuals and business enterprises have no choice but to do when hard times hit: they are cutting costs and downsizing. Think of the extra $1,238 per square foot wasted on that ugly building against the backdrop of all the tough choices that
responsible city and state governments here and elsewhere are having to make.
Think of the extra $1,238 per square foot wasted on that ugly building against the backdrop of some of the choices that YOU have had to make in your own life and the choices that your employer has had to make - and consider that, if you live and work in Tarrant County, it was you and your employer who had to pay the bill for that $1,238 times how many square feet.
Now, think of the sort of people who brushed the price tag of the thing off as "no big deal" because they got a building by an architect who was proclaimed to be "fashionable" by various trendsetters who dictate the tastes of mindless sheep who will praise
anything so long as doing so will make others think that they are special, elite, cultured, trendy, fashionable or avant-garde - even if what they are praising is nothing more than pretentious crap.
$1,238 per square foot wasted to satiate the pretentiousness, the delusions of grandeur and the desperate pretense of self-esteem on the part of Leonardo de la Garza, the TCC board and their sycophants and cronies and any member of the public who knew better but refused to condemn it because it was a "fashionable architect" and supposed to be a "masterpiece" and to speak out against it might make certain people look down upon them as boorish bumpkins who drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations.
$1,238 per square foot. Some bargain huh?
One of my favorite Ben Franklin quotes is: "When the well's dry, we know the worth of water."
The well is precariously close to dry - and $1,238 times however many square feet could sure be used right about now by an awful lot of people to quench a whole lot of thirsts.
THAT is what and why I will
never forgive the people who were responsible for it. That gray pile of lopsided concrete TxDot highway embankment panels is indeed a monument to something: it is a monument to pretentiousness, to corruption and to out of control profligacy. And in that respect, its soviet style ugliness is somehow fitting and appropriate.
