Beach blvd improvments

[BostechComputers]

Well Beach Blvd is getting "nicer"....new asphalt is coming,they just installed ligthing poles past few days so no more darkness driving during night time.
Hard to belive Beach blvd is only now getting some lights.
Rest of Beach is betting additional line not to mention bridge and whole stack of new housing developments.
I've been to some and you won't belive that houses for 500K are made from such a cheap material like they are 50K houses,design is nice but quality 0.

Anyway I noticed they are doing demolition on lot at Beach/Pearl or better know lot with statue of T-Rex with bone.It's been sitting empty for years,does anyone know what is going on there?

P.S.
I always thought that T-Rex will be there in 50 years. :-)

[copperfiend]

I used to work at Sir Goony's(home of the T-Rex) when I was in high school. I can't believe the darn thing is still there.

[BostechComputers]

Tattered T. rex could keep watch on Beach Boulevard for years




By MARK WOODS, The Times-Union


He has been standing there for decades, a familiar site for drivers heading east on Beach Boulevard.


A 20-foot dinosaur, leaning on a bone, baring his jagged teeth.

While evolution has wiped out many things along this road, including all the other animals that once stood guard over holes at a place called Goony Golf, the dinosaur has remained.

So when bulldozers cleared everything off a lot near the corner of Beach and Peach -- everything except a faux Tyrannosaurus rex that has roamed the Earth since the days of 99-cent fossil fuel -- people began calling the company that put up "For Lease" signs on the property.

What's going to happen to the dinosaur?

The answer is that he probably won't be going anywhere soon, that he likely will end up a fixture in the parking lot of a new shopping center.

Hawk St. John, commercial leasing consultant for Ash Properties Inc., says the owners of the property had some offers to buy the dinosaur. They declined and instead "anticipate" they will restore the dinosaur and make it an "integral part" of a shopping center with retail stores and restaurants.

"For the last 33 or 35 years, it has been kind of a local landmark," St. John said.

It sounds kind of silly, but it's true.



Should the Beach Blvd. dinosaur be preserved?
Yes No

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That's how one reader began a phone conversation. It sounds kind of silly, Barbara Turner said, but if we can save other familiar landmarks in town, why not an old dinosaur?

"It just makes the boring, frustrating ride along Beach Boulevard a little fun," she said. "You just look at him and smile every time."

It's not exactly classic architecture. It's not even unique. It's part of a chain of miniature golf courses, covered with giant owls and signature dinosaurs.

The first Sir Goony Golf course was built in 1960 in Chattanooga, Tenn. By the 1970s, there were several dozen courses around the country. Since then, the courses and the dinosaurs have been gradually heading toward extinction.

The Beach Boulevard dinosaur has inhaled exhaust fumes, weathered thunderstorms and faced the growth equivalent of a meteor shower. A Wal-Mart Supercenter went in about a mile away. The dinosaur survived.

Now he stands alone, a sentinel in front of a dirt lot, a reminder of the road's long miniature golf history, which began long before Goony Golf arrived.

It was 50 years ago that a former insurance agent, Don Clayton, bought a patch of deserted land on Beach Boulevard and built one of the first courses in what became the best-known miniature golf brand in the world: Putt-Putt.

"I thought it would be a good site," Clayton told the Times-Union in 1994. "Everybody goes to the beach, and they had to go that way."

In the past 50 years, going that way has changed dramatically. And in the past 10 years -- not coincidentally following the opening of Adventure Landing in 1995 -- more old mini golf courses have shut down.

But the dinosaur remains, watching the traffic pass by, making Barbara Turner and others smile.

Before we get too sappy, perhaps I should tell you something about him.

He's kind of ugly.

No, he's real ugly. And tacky. And showing his age.

I have a feeling he never was all that cute. But now he is covered with graffiti. The most recent layer of orange paint is faded and peeling. One of his light-bulb eyes has been smashed. His right arm, which once moved a board up, is stuck in place.

Put it this way: You know how people talked about the old library being ugly and outdated? It was a gleaming piece of modern architecture compared to the old dinosaur.

Yet I understand why people want to see him there on the south side of Beach Boulevard, why they would be sad if they came to an intersection that sounds like it should be in a song -- the corner of Beach and Peach -- and he was gone.

It's not that he reminds drivers of miniature golf's past. It's that he reminds them of their own past.

He might be ugly. He might be tacky. But he's a familiar landmark on an ever-changing road.


mark.woodsjacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/051706/woo_21892776.shtml