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Saturday’s Lofty Rant

by on Jul. 11, 2009, under Uncategorized

Josh Brodesky, who covers the real estate beat for the Arizona Daily Star, has a short note today about a project called “The Lofts at River Walk.”  Either Brodesky doesn’t know what a loft is, or he was on a tight deadline and went with the press release. It happens.

The project will finish 11 unfinished town houses and then sell off “108 finished but vacant townhome lots.”

Let’s be clear here. This is not a loft project. This is a town house project that bears no relation whatever to a loft development or  traditional loft apartments. Lofts and loft apartments  are generally found in the center city, not at Hacienda Del Sol and River Road.

Here’s a dictionary definitition: “A loft is one of the upper floors of a warehouse or business building especially when not partitioned.”  These are generally found in the center city, not at Hacienda Del Sol and River Road.

Originally, converted lofts were occupied by writers and artists, struggling actors and random collections of free souls. They were cheap (then), downtown, and cold. A kind of unpartitioned decorating style developed–the loft apartment.

The Old Ice House

The Old Ice House

To my knowledge there is only one true loft development in Tucson: The Icehouse Lofts, which were built in the simply enormous ice storage room of the old Arizona Ice and Cold Storage plant. (Full disclosure–I owned a studio apartment at the Ice House.)

Loft life required a new decorating style, characterized by openness and living areas defined by the furniture they contained rather than by walls.

Loft Style Apartment

Loft Style Apartment

Here’s an architect rendering  of a loft-style apartment.  Not to everyone’s taste, I know, but all across the nation major warehouses, garages, and storage buildings are being converted into apartments. I think the open styling of the apartments is minimalist and clean. I also think they’re hip. They are near urban centers. They are not desert townhouses for new arrivals from Cleveland.

If it ain’t a loft don’t call it a loft.

Thus endeth the rant.

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  • Korey K

    The term “loft” is just one of a seeminly endless string of real estate buzzwords so misused that they have  renduced the original definations to near meaninglesness.

    My favorite is “authentic Santa Fe style”, as the originally known ”Pueblo Revival style” from the early 20th century is hardly authentic itself.  But, that is another rant.

  • Korey K

    reduced, not renduced
    meaninglessness, not meaninglesness

    sigh

  • jo smith

    Korey,
    When people type fast letters often are placed in the wrong place thus mispeled words.  This is not grammar class.
    sigh

  • http://thedataport.wordpress.com Art Jacobson

    Korey K…
    Loved your rant. Another one of mine is the real estate agent’s hijacking of the word “home.” According to the RE Agent you don’t have a home if you don’t own a house. By that standard my family must have been homeless in its Chicago apartment. All my school mates were homeless, too.

  • Red Star

    The reporter’s name is Josh Brodesky, not Josh Brodsky.
    Jacobson writes, “Josh Brodsky (sic), who covers the real estate beat for the Arizona Daily Star, has a short note today about a project called “The Lofts at River Walk.”  Either Brodsky (sic) doesn’t know what a loft is, or he was on a tight deadline and went with the press release. It happens.”
    The problem here is the reporter didn’t name the development. The developers named it. The reporter simply reported the name the developers gave the development. Was the reporter expected to write something like, “There’s this failed development but I can’t tell you its name because you might think I’m unsophisticated or under deadline pressure?”
    It happens.

  • http://none jim

    In the 60′s,  the icehouse caught fire and was visible all the way to the north side where I lived.

    I drove to the icehouse and was standing on the property when the roof collapsed compressing the burning gasses (it was lined with cork) which belched out in a horizontal sheet 30 feet above our heads and extending most of a block behind us.
    … people ran for their lives. What had been a pretty pyro display after dark turned suddenly into a sprint for survival. (Maybe 100+ people)
    Hard to imagine they made what was left of that into ‘lofts’.
     

  • http://thedataport.wordpress.com Art Jacobson

    Update, Sunday morning.
    Thanks to Red Star for catching my misspelling of “Brodesky,” which I have corrected. Everyone needs a copy editor.
    Red Star’s question, “What else would Brodesky call the project if not what the developer named it?” is well-taken. By the same token he might have mentioned that these townhouses were not lofts.

  • Red Star

    Brodesky’s piece (today) repeatedly refers to the development as “town houses.” So he’s covered–he isn’t misrepresenting. Whatever a developer names a development, it’s not clear to Red Star that fairly good reporters (such as Brodesky) working at awful newspapers (such as ADS) can or even should work it out in detail, like a Harvard seminar…
    Developer misrepresentation by how they name their developments is a duh.
    Indeed, even USGS can’t seem to settle on whether the Rillito is a creek or a  river.  Red Star  considers the Rillito (and the Pantano) a great big  wash.
    But of course we can’t have, “The Lofts by the Wash” or, “The Lofts by the Creek.”

    • radmax

      Much ado about nothing.

  • biggyt
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