Listing New Albany’s eyesores (a work in progress)

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Let’s talk for a moment about eyesores, specifically, those that exist in downtown New Albany.

First, an exclusion. Our candidates for NA Confidential’s “Top Five New Albany Eyesores” list cannot be examples of New Albany’s asinine lack of simple ordinance enforcement.

Junk cars, appliances, engines, garbage mounds and dilapidated houses are obviously present in abundance throughout the city, but since these problems ideally could be resolved by simple coercion, cleaning and clearing, they’ll be omitted for now.

Rather, we’re looking for eyesores and tastelessness that intrude upon a broader aesthetic plane of the cityscape, and that include willful human decisions pertaining to design, construction, location and planning.

Perhaps they’re all well within code and violating no regulations … except, of course, dictates of taste and decency.

Honorable Mention

Look-alike Budweiser marketing logos (everywhere in town)
Have you noticed that just about every seedy redneck bar in downtown New Albany displays that same Budweiser advertising logos? They’re generated by the local Anheuser-Busch wholesaler and provided free of charge. Does drinking and selling this product lead to a suppression of the creative gene? Do lemmings drink bad beer?

Used house lot off I-64, westbound
Whole houses forlornly sit on blocks, awaiting settlement of challenges to the decision to move them to a public park and create low-income starter housing (subject of an extensive thread two weeks ago).

Schmitt Furniture, corner State and Main
Schmitt’s main building, which is so readily visible from the Interstate, hasn’t had a glass window above street level since NA Confidential was in diapers, and the family’s Reisz warehouse down the street has been crying out for attention for almost as long.

NAC’s Top Five Eyesores

5. Smith Furniture and Appliance, northwest corner of State and Market
They’re leaving downtown soon, and of course will be missed, but when we’re finished drying our eyes, can we acknowledge that the traditional color scheme of black paint (and white owl) is seriously unsightly, and that the building appears to be falling apart?

4. NAPA Auto Parts on East Spring Street
Every exterior surface, including bricks, windows and side doors, but not the security lights (must have been added since the last paint job) is covered in a bright, obtrusive Royal Blue. Tacky, tacky, tacky.

3. West side of Pearl Street between Main and Market (exact address unknown)
The entire façade of an old commercial building is covered with glistening sheet metal. What’s underneath it, dead bodies?

2. Parking lot, northwest corner of Pearl and Spring
This gaping hole is noteworthy because of something that was there before nothing was there: The city’s beautiful old Post Office, which a previous generation of community “leaders” demolished.

“Something, but always leading to nothing” just might be the official New Albany city motto.

1. The sweeping vista of downtown New Albany from the westbound I-64 (Elm Street) ramp
Once we’ve succeeded in getting Louisvillians to cross the bridge and visit us, what is the first thing they see as they descend the ramp and queue up at the stop light?

An abandoned gas station and former fireworks shop. A liquor store with more of the public Budweiser materials noted above. The socialist bloc-inspired dirty gray Riverview Towers. The powder blue shambles that used to be Nicholson Maytag. The Vernia Monument company’s decrepit rear annex and filthy back yard.

Folks, the view may not be representative, but it’s what we provide to visitors traveling from Louisville. At least in summer, the greenery softens the impact, but year-round, it is an exceedingly poor introduction to New Albany.

We certainly missed a few, so please, feel free to comment.

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