The renovation of the old Acme shopping center (I think it’s supposed to be called Windsor Plaza, now) is coming along nicely, and it won’t be too much longer before it’s complete. There may be a few empty stores for a while behind those nice new doors, but we can wait.
But I’ve been wondering, “How much will the rent be for the apartments over the stores? There’s a nice large one just over where the Acme used to be. Must be two or three bedrooms, at least.”
“Oh, that’s not an apartment. It’s just empty space behind the facade.”
“But why does it have all those fancy windows?”
“They’re not real windows. They’re fake. I think they’re called ‘architectural design features,’ or some such.”
“That’s terrible. Doesn’t the township have a say in such things? How can they allow fakes?”
“ No. The township only controls how a new project meets the building code; not how it looks. Sometimes they make exceptions, say, for the size of signs, for example. But they can’t tell the developer what the design should look like.”
“Good grief! This place looks just like a bunch of other shopping malls I`ve seen around the state. There must be 400 just like it.”
“Actually, only 375. It’s Number 27B in the ‘Strip Mall Design Manual.’ By using this manual, the developers save a lot in architect’s fees.”
“That’s just great. So much for meeting the needs of our local community. I wonder what the ‘redevelopment area’ near the train station is going to look like. More fake windows? What can we do now?”
“Get used to it.”
— Dick Snedeker
