It’s only a thought shared among bloggers such as on the San Jose MercuryNews.com Web site. Maybe it isn’t happening this way.
But IBM Building 25 burned to a shell recently, which, coincidentally, was convenient to some; as suspiciously so as the conflagration of several other landmark buildings in San Jose over the past few years.
"We are obviously very concerned at the recent losses of a number of the city's historic buildings by fire," Mercury News quoted Brian Grayson, interim executive director of the Preservation Action Council of San Jose. The group had sued to protect the building from demolition and continues to fight to have portions restored.
"There's no remodeling that," opined San Jose Fire Capt. Dave Parker of the burned-out hulk.
There are those of us who still remember the fires in the nation’s capital following Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination four decades ago. It was a horrible experience. Yet the aftermath (over the next quarter century, driven initially by Edward R. Carr) was a Phoenix-like rebirth of the 14th Street corridor.
The likely outcome of the loss of IBM Building 25, though, is more short-term: a big-box store on an 18-acre site.
There’s rarely such thing as a good building fire. But are some ultimate results better than others when tragedy strikes? All developers are looking for ROI. Some, maybe, look more deeply than others.