Who will save the Glasshouse Garage?
The city's ugliest parking garage has a fan club, a landmark bid and a demolition date.
The Glasshouse Garage was finished in 1971, and people have been asking for it to be knocked down since about 1972. It has six floors of parking, a spiral ramp that makes small children cheer and large cars scrape, and a glass stair tower that gave the building its name and leaked from the first winter.
In March the city council agreed to sell the site. The buyer wants condos. The demolition date is set for next spring.
The fan club
Then something odd happened. A group calling itself the Friends of the Glasshouse held a picnic on the roof deck in June. Two hundred people came. They brought a brass band.
The Friends say the garage is the best surviving example of its kind in the region, and they have applied to have it landmarked. The council says it is a parking garage.
The bid
A landmark decision usually takes about six months. If the garage is landmarked before the sale closes, the buyer would need a permit to demolish it, and the condos would get much harder to build.
Nobody at the council will say whether they are watching the calendar. Everyone else is.
We will report the decision when it comes. Until then, the roof deck is open until ten, and the view of the harbor is, everyone agrees, the best in the city.
