Failure Is a Bruise and Not a Tattoo

The more things change, we’re told, the more they remain the same; that’s a truism that has the added advantage of also being the truth. And as calamitous and challenging as 2020 was, as I look forward or try, to 2021 I admit it can be hard to be an optimist about where I live when there’s so much proof that the beauty of pessimism is you can only be surprised and never disappointed.

The first weekend of this new year arrived with distressing and depressing news that the developers of the Reid & Hughes Building which has had a sadder life than anyone or anything else I can think of, have decided they will not continue with their restoration and revitalization project.

Then 

We in Norwich may call ourselves The Rose of New England, but if we have a spirit animal it’s Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. You scoff? Consider this: within moments of first reading about the developer’s change of heart (in pre-pandemic times, financing was problematic on a good day, and after our lives were turned upside down last March, the millions of dollars required for development and permanent financing simply could not be secured), social media commenters weighed in and it was way less than pretty, but very much in keeping with that Eeyore-like view of the world that I’ve encountered so often since I and my family arrived here in the fall of 1991. You can read some of it for yourself here. 

I always see ‘historic’ used in connection with the building’s name but intending no disrespect, I don’t use it because I have no idea why it’s considered historic, though convincing me should certainly not be regarded as essential or important. In the interest of full disclosure, the Reid & Hughes Building for me has always been a destitute and derelict pile of broken bricks, mangled mortar, and memories that fewer and fewer of us who live here now share with those who lived here then.

Now

I don’t know who owned the Reid & Hughes Building when I first started walking through downtown almost three decades ago but whoever it was didn’t take care of it and as someone who was constantly told he was NFH, Not From Here, it seemed to me those in charge of the city at the time, like so many others elsewhere before and since wanted to believe that talking about a problem and coming up with a solution was one and the same thing. As Eeyore himself might say to that, “oh, well…”

In 2017, the City Council, came to a development agreement stabilizing the building and sparing it from the wrecking ball in what probably would have looked like knocking out two front teeth in downtown. The developers hoped to create living spaces above streets in Down City filled with small businesses and restaurants that needed, and still need, as many people living there as we can have.

When so many of us stand around with our hands in our pockets waiting for initiatives to fail so we can rush online to proclaim “I knew it all along!” it makes my hair hurt. Not succeeding is NOT failing. Not trying is. When we fall, and we will, then we need to get up and try again and not stop until we get to where we're going.  
-bill kenny