When Enough is Enough

There’s an old story often told about the novelist Kurt Vonnegut attending a party at a billionaire’s house with his buddy and fellow novelist Joseph Heller. As they walked through the house, they were surrounded by expensive trappings and beautiful original paintings by some of the world’s most famous artists. Vonnegut apparently said to Heller something along the lines of, “How does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday made more money than your novel Catch-22 earned in its entire history?”

Heller’s reaction? “That’s true,” he said. “But I have something he doesn’t have. I have enough.”

I thought about that line recently as the house next to ours was being torn down to make way for a brand new, likely much bigger home than the ranch house that had been standing there for nearly 50 years. It was a modest home – three bedrooms, three bathrooms – but it was a beautifully designed, solidly built house that stood the test of time, weathering storm after storm over the decades. For the families who lived and vacationed there, it was home. It was enough. 

Now it’s gone.

While that’s just one small example on my block, you see it everywhere on Marco, in Southwest Florida, and all over the country. I have nothing against commercial and residential development, it just all feels a bit out of control, somewhat impulsive and not very thoughtful, like we’re devolving into a society that can’t seem to get enough... of anything.

I read a story the other day about the actor Chris Pratt. He reportedly bought a sleek, modernist Los Angeles home built in the 1950s for more than twelve million dollars, then promptly tore it down to build what was described as “a supersized 15,000 square foot farmhouse.”  As expected, the neighborhood and the internet exploded with outrage, with some saying it was the equivalent of buying a Rothko painting just for the frame.

Closer to home, the explosive housing boom in Cape Coral is causing water tables to drop to unprecedented levels, leaving some residents without any running water at all. Cape Coral resident Connie Wassman told a local TV station recently that she has spent thousands of dollars to continually lower her well as the water table dropped, but is still running out of water, unable to even do laundry or wash her floors the day she was interviewed. “To ask all the neighbors to conserve water when they are still giving out building permits? How can you do that?” she said, referring to the city’s development approach.

I get it. People are moving to Florida in droves, and there are many tangible benefits that we all enjoy as a result of that growth. But can we all just take a breath and think about – and plan for – the long-term implications of that growth and some of the culture and history we’re poised to lose as a result? It’s possible. I’ve seen it.

My longtime friend and business partner Gene Kansas is an Atlanta-based real estate developer who specializes in buying and restoring historic commercial properties in and around Atlanta. One has been converted into a mixed-use retail and residential space. The building itself was erected in 1912 and sits on Auburn Avenue, a neighborhood long known as Sweet Auburn, in Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Historic District. For more than 80 years, it was the headquarters for the longest-running African American daily newspaper in our country’s history: the Atlanta Daily World.

A tornado ripped through the building in 2008, doing significant damage and rendering it unoccupiable. In 2012, another developer filed a permit to tear the building down. The community revolted against the plan and more than 1,100 petitions were collected in the neighborhood, saving the building and giving Gene the opportunity to lead a historic preservation effort that renovated the structure.

A couple years later, Gene’s partnership purchased the old Southern School Book Building, built in 1910, a couple doors down from the Atlanta Daily World building. In the 1960s, the building served as the headquarters for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, chaired at the time by civil rights icon and future congressman John Lewis. The building is now a shared workspace called “Constellations,” signifying its role in aligning stars (its tenants) around a shared, common purpose of creating community.

“Taking a breath is a really good idea when it comes to development,” Kansas said. “It’s not saying ‘don’t do something.’ It’s saying, ‘Let’s stop and think.’ It’s about a system of values that asks, do we care about history and art, or do we care about currency and how much is in our bank account? There’s an old adage among preservationists that says, ‘It’s not good because it’s old. It’s old because it’s good.’ And that applies to everything in life, whether it’s a relationship, a tradition, a recipe, a building.”

I’ve previously referenced Richard Rohr in this column. He’s a Franciscan friar and one of my favorite modern writers and spiritual philosophers. Each week he picks a theme that he reflects on with a daily morning email. A few weeks back, his theme was simplicity, and one of his emails summed all of this up pretty well. 

“Most of us have grown up with a worldview that makes a virtue and goal out of accumulation, consumption, and collecting,” he wrote. “It has taught us to assume, quite falsely, that more is better. It’s hard for us to recognize this unsustainable and unhappy trap because it’s the only game in town. 

Franciscan spirituality asks us to let go, to recognize that there is enough to go around to meet everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed. Living simply helps level the playing field and offers abundance and enoughness to all.”

Amen to that.