How to demolish and build green without guilt

Our town wants to demolish a 140,000 sf school that is in basically good condition and replace it with a “Net Zero” building (I created a mini-site just for my thoughts on this school). A handful of the town’s environmentalists question the “greenness” of pushing an apparently usable building into a landfill.

My brilliant idea to relieve the guilt: Tesla bulldozer. Model B!

4 thoughts on “How to demolish and build green without guilt

  1. Why not build a new building, and refurbish the existing one as housing for new refugees or undocumented immigrants?

  2. I have found this trend to bulldoze and rebuild fascinating. Had two kids that went through the public schools in Lexington (similar school replacements going on there over time) and two kids that went to expensive private prep schools. While the prep schools did build fancy new sports and arts facilities they also seemed to be willing to use century old classroom buildings that were periodically getting upgrades rather than replacement. They seemed to be embracing the mixed approach favored by Philip.

  3. Our town officials, to encourage citizens to vote to bury themselves in debt, like to use an analogy of fixing an old car or buying a factory-new one. It is obviously false analogy due to the fact that there are no efficient car-style factories for buildings (modular comes close, but nothing like a Toyota or Honda assembly line). And private house owners never do this, e.g., “we need a new roof and want A/C so we’ll just bulldoze the house rather than get a roof and a split-system”.

    LinePilot: Lexington is nowhere near as profligate as Lincoln committees propose to be. The spending per student is only about 1/2 in Lexington due to the fact that Lexington builds in partnership with MSBA and also Lexington seems to build a smaller amount of square footage per student.

  4. I read your mini site. Amazing how people just love spending money like it is water. More amazing is when they want to spend it all on the least important part of an education – the building. Maybe the millionaires for Obama really do think the money comes from the sky. I would be curious how these people make their incomes. Is it mostly passive (i.e. beneficiaries of royalties)? I mean, if you didn’t have to work hard to attain it, maybe pissing it away doesn’t feel so bad. There’s more to come, right?

    After reading it , I think you shouldn’t refer to Lincoln as Happy Valley – it should be called Wacky Valley.

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