The current compromise on the Fudge Project only appears to be a third shorter. (I.e. the Divinity Project but it’s named for the wan confection, nothing religious.) Nothing seems to say what brand hotel will manage the lodging part of the formerly 15- and now 10-story building on the club-cafe strip Dickson Street, where nothing rises past three. (And the best joints don’t get rolling until 3 nyah nyah nyah.)
The builders will find a chain? Why not now, when a big name would be a sure selling point? Oh, they have in mind some independent? Why not say so so the city can judge that business plan?
The history-repeats-here is not Fayetteville’s fracas over a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, which Brick announced will be the Divinity-Fudge’s restaurant (revolving, on the top). The memory is the Mountain Inn downtown, closed several decades yet only razed in 2005.
The worry is not a monolith atop Dickson Street. It doesn’t belong there, but let’s not be provincial — or aesthetic. The worry is of a big, empty building on prime real estate. No hotel will last there: parking, interstate access, etc. Most of its condos will remain unsold: too expensive, too noisy etc. Most of the ground floor retail will remain unleased: few shops last on Dickson; it’s a nightclub district.
Fudge is a fiasco. The Divinity developers will move on, and within two years it will become a largely unlit hulk. Instead, let’s think Dallas’ Greenville Avenue, by SMU. Or Palo Alto’s University Avenue, by Stanford. It’s called planning. Let the process work. -30-
