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About Faces
By adamg on Mon, 06/18/2007 - 7:20pm
When Jake Wark saw this photo of the derelict Faces sign, he knew he had to check it out before a developer tore it down. So he drove up to the seedy old Rte. 2 joint, which hasn't been open (for legal activities, at any rate) for more than a decade:
I stuck my camera lens up to the drilled-out lock of the front (highway side) door. The glass portions of it were boarded up so as to defy human entry, but the workmen left a convenient aperture for the amateur fotog. The bright light pouring in through the upper windows belies the near-palpable sense that something very bad is just waiting to be found in there.
I'll note that as my girlfriend and I were scouting around the place, a spooky black SUV pulled over to the side of the highway and didn't leave. For various reasons, I do not believe the individuals inside were plainclothes staties. ...
It wasn't all bleak, though:
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Comments
Furniture Dipper's Legacy
When I worked at Arthur D. Little during the late 1980s/early 1990s, I always wondered why "derelect nightclub" was considred such a high calling for the space.
What I was told then was that a furniture stripper had held down that space for much of a century or at least after it was filled in as part of the taming of the Great Swamp, and had dumped loads of toxics behind the buildings. Consequently, and extensive clean up awaited whoever wanted to change or modify or redevelop the property.
While there was a chinese restaraunt off and on there, I don't think much of the rest has been open in nearly TWO decades.
Such a shame for land so close to the T and in an area where high rises are popping up in environmentally sensitive areas and filling in current flood-buffering wetlands.
I look at that keyhole photo and also think about the firefighters that died in North Carolina yesterday, and how dangerous crap-stuffed abandoned buildings can be. That building has long been a nightmare just waiting to happen.
A Short Walk Away
The building's dreary facade, the code-violating fire hazards inside, and the crabgrass-and-ruptured-blacktop motif of its parking lot notwithstanding, some of the area surrounding Faces is very nice. The beautiful Alewife Wildlife Preservation is about two minutes away by foot, and we saw a heron, a wild rabbit, and what I think were shorebirds.
Maybe the bland office park between the ex-disco and the nature hike acts as an artificial buffer zone, keeping all the accumulated turpentine, linseed oil, and MSG from seeping into the nearby protected area.
Slated for Development
Those woods are very nice - and much endangered by development. There are plans to cut down much of it and turn it into even more of the same thing that lines Cambridgepark Drive - the street near Alewife with the mid-rise office ziggurats and plenty of extra water to go around in flood times.
I'm not sure what the underground hydrology is - I vaguely remember some sort of mitigations going on to isolate the site. In any case, herons, a lone beaver, and lots of interesting wildlife hang out around the old ADL site.
I'd much rather see Faces redeveloped than the "undeveloped" areas get plowed over for more office development. I think it makes more sense from a traffic standpoint as well as a preservation standpont. There are some good people trying to save that area because of the flood protection and open space it affords to three cities and towns, and the Belmont powers that be aren't interested.