CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the rendering as a Village proposal. It is a privately proposed boutique hotel and rooftop bar for the vacant property beside the Holly Hotel. The Bugle regrets assigning municipal ownership to a private-sector daydream.
HOLLY — A conceptual rendering circulated Tuesday showing what the vacant former Arcade Antiques property could look like if engineers approved the site, multiple commissions signed off, the courts settled several remaining questions, financing appeared, and every resident of Holly briefly agreed on what “fits downtown.”
The private proposal depicts a boutique hotel and rooftop bar beside the Holly Hotel, complete with landscaping, outdoor seating, smiling pedestrians, and a legally compliant six-inch buffer zone extending from the ground to the edge of space.
“This is not a Village plan,” said fictional planning consultant Dennis Harcourt, carefully positioning himself several feet away from the disputed property line. “It is a private proposal showing one possible future under circumstances that currently do not exist.”
The rendering was created to help residents visualize how the giant empty lot might someday become a giant building containing people who paid extra to drink above street level.
It also includes decorative lighting, rooftop seating, and one man standing near the hotel with a surveyor’s transit, muttering, “That balcony is four inches over.”
The next step will be the customary review process, followed by public demands that the building be taller, shorter, older-looking, more profitable, less visible, surrounded by additional parking, and somehow indistinguishable from a structure built 140 years ago.