ALBANY — I’m vacation this week, so what follows here is material from Churchill’s Corner, my weekly newsletter. My apologies to those of you who subscribe and have read these pieces.
But if you haven’t and would like to subscribe, you can do so here.
Fond memories
Many of us drive by the Central Warehouse and rue its ugliness. Harold Schmidt drives by and remembers.
Schmidt called me after reading my column about the long-shuttered warehouse, which, as many of you know, is one of Albany’s biggest and most visible blights. Schmidt, 73, told me his father worked at the Central Warehouse as a watchman and would often bring his boys, Harold included, to work.
Schmidt, who lives in Castleton, remembers the cold storage warehouse as a cavernous building with a noisy engine room and a big lunch room. He remembers his father, who died in 1978, taking him up on the roof to look at the commanding views of the surrounding city and distant mountains.
“I would imagine the inside is still the same,” Schmidt said of the warehouse. “If there was an opportunity for the public to go in there, I’d be the first in line.”
Evan Blum, the current owner of the warehouse, has vague plans for it and doesn’t seem to be making much progress toward realizing them. In the column, I wrote that murals on the exterior could easily make the building an asset to the city.
Yes, the murals would not come cheap. But neither would demolition. In fact, for years now, the warehouse has been stuck in a kind of limbo; renovation and demolition are both prohibitively expensive. So it just sits, year after year after year.
Schmidt understands why many people loathe the warehouse and want it razed. He doesn’t deny it’s an eyesore. But neither can he deny the power of his memories of being small in that big, concrete building.
“I like seeing it,” Schmidt said. “I think of my father.”
Worries about Biden?
If there’s anything modern-day politics should teach us, it’s humility. Voters will defy expectations and, as Super Tuesday illustrated, change their minds on a dime.
So I’m not going to assume Joe Biden will certainly be the Democratic nominee. Voters may have another trick up their sleeves, and Bernie Sanders could yet mount a comeback. Still, I do think it’s extremely likely Biden will be the nominee, and that leads me to ask the following question: Does Biden scare you?
I asked that same question in this space about Sanders a few weeks back, but for an entirely different reason. With Sanders, it was the socialist label that made many voters uncomfortable, even if they agreed with his economic positions. What’s worrisome about Biden, I think, is something very different. (And please believe me when I say the next paragraph is written with sympathy.)
Spend a few minutes watching old video of Biden — from the 2012 vice presidential debate, say — and it’s obvious he is not the same person today. There seems to be cognitive slippage, which isn’t at all surprising for a 77-year-old man who recently suffered a terrible personal trauma in the death of a son. For me, at least, there’s real concern as to whether Biden is up for not just the coming campaign, but the presidency.
Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire got a close look at Biden and didn’t like what they saw. Well, Biden is the same guy now. His success on Super Tuesday doesn’t wipe away his problems, and it sure seems as though Democrats are putting their eggs in a very shaky basket.
I know what some of you will say: No matter how much Biden has slipped, he’s better than President Trump, who has shown signs of his own cognitive slippage. I get it. I get it. And in Sunday’s column, I wrote about how Biden’s obvious empathy is a strength of his candidacy.
But one last thing: The March 15 debate will be a key test for Biden. In earlier debates, he reminded me of the kid playing right field who hopes the ball doesn’t come his way. In the next debate, though, it will be just him and Sanders, and if Biden isn’t up for the tasks ahead there will be no hiding it.
Not so fond memories
When I was a cub reporter in the small city of Biddeford, Maine, I wrote dozens of stories about a place called MERC — the Maine Energy Recovery Co.
MERC was a trash-to-energy incinerator that myopic and desperate officials in the old mill city had welcomed into Biddeford’s downtown; they were snookered into believing that the incinerator would generate low-cost energy and tax revenue.
But MERC was a disaster. It spewed ash on the city on multiple occasions. It stank. It brought endless truck traffic to residential streets. It damaged the city’s reputation. It led to legitimate worries about public health effects.
Newcomers to Biddeford would look at MERC in astonishment and wonder how it came to be. What were city officials thinking? How did this happen?
MERC has been in my head recently as I’ve been writing about the S.A. Dunn Landfill, which sits next to Rensselaer’s school complex. Myopic city officials accepted the landfill and the state Department of Environmental Conservation approved it. And like MERC, the landfill is proving to be a terrible mistake, one that has residents angry about odors and truck traffic, and worried about impacts on health.
MERC eventually closed, but it took a long and bitter fight to get there. Will the Dunn Landfill close anytime soon? That’s an open question, but for the good of Rensselaer, the answer should be:
As soon as possible.
[email protected] ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill
Contact columnist Chris Churchill at [email protected] or 518-454-5442.
