checkerboard.jpg
Portland Architecture blogger Brian Libby reports that the "checkerboard building" between SW 10th and 11th on Stark has been sold to developer Dick Singer, for redevelopment by Hoyt Architects. It's great news, because it's my favorite building in Portland, but Libby has disturbing news about the potential future of the distinctive checkerboard facade:

There have been some design possibilities that include keeping the signature colored panel facade, and other schemes that remove it in favor of something more glassy. It's also undecided whether additional floors would be added. So technically, the unique checkerboard facade faces both its best potential in many years but also a threat.

No! Save the checkerboard building! Libby, too, is concerned:

But as a longtime fan of this building's exterior, I personally am crossing all my fingers and toes that the colored panels on the outside will be preserved. Is this building a masterpiece? Certainly not. But there's an elegant simplicity to this building's facade, and a playful touch of color lacking in most all other buildings.

Elegant simplicity? Not a "masterpiece?" It's a masterpiece, pure and simple, Brian. A God-given masterpiece! And if Dick Singer thinks otherwise, if he so much as DARES to remove the checkerboard panels, and replace them with glass, there'll be protests, and there'll be marches. In the streets. With me in them.