In response to a Daily News editorial a couple of weeks back that mocked the idea of landmarking the Domino Sugar Factory (“it might be considered a landmark, as in, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s that big useless place with the big worn-out sign that just sits there’”), the Municipal Art Society’s Lisa Kersavage wrote a rebuttal that the paper ran the next day. According to Kersavage, opponents of preservation like to paint a black-and-white picture of the decision whether to save or raze a site like this by implying that a preservationist stance is necessarily anti-affordable housing.

Neighborhoods where manufacturing and industrial buildings are retained and reused, like in DUMBO and Soho, have an exciting character and some of the highest property values in the city. We’ve reused buildings effectively before and now is no time to turn back the clock. The city must take steps to protect our heritage. And when developers tell us that affordable housing and historic preservation can’t coexist, preservationists and housing advocates must stand together and show them they are wrong.

You know where we stand on preserving the Domino Sugar Factory. Are there any readers who self-identify as being particularly concerned with affordable housing who think that the owners should make an effort to preserve the factory? Or does the need for more units of housing trump any concerns like these?
Oh, Sugar [NY Daily News]
Living in a Sugar Factory [MAS.org]
Photo by Jack Jeffries