Ignoring Concord Place

I used to like looking at this building … each and every time it would enter my orbit it would grab my attention, and I was always happy it did … but then I grew up. Don’t correct me if I’m wrong but it used to say Concord ‘Plaza’ on it’s exterior windowless wall and the subtext labeling it a ‘retirement community’ wasn’t there. So as a kid I thought it was a fancy hotel like the Plaza Hotel in New York — famously featured in the movie Home Alone 2.

Fast-forward to adulthood — I still pass this building somewhat routinely, and I still know nothing specific about it, but I do know a lot more about the world in which it exists, and that has changed things. I know it’s a retirement community, and it doesn’t look like a good one. I imagine old people packed into its many floors going about their days with little to no purpose, many of them sick and just trying to survive. I imagine a staff that is overworked and underpaid and now dealing with a pandemic. And I imagine the view from the top is not so great … because one of its features is Interstate 294, which is full of dirty trucks and cars whizzing past, getting stuck in traffic, flipping each other off in acts of road-rage, or even killing each other in accidents. So as an adult my thoughts on this place are not pleasant, which is why when I pass it now … like much of the rest of the adult world … I just try to ignore it.