The site violates all sorts of new urbanist principles. Instead of defining the corner of Alameda and Wadsworth, the Best Buy sits back behind a massive parking lot. It presents a blank wall to the tree-lined sidewalk on W. Alaska Dr. The building has no windows. The list goes on.
Continuum allowed it during the darkest days of the recession, presumably under the assumption that bad development was better than no development.
Alas, this is not so, at least not for anyone who wants to see good urban planning in downtown Lakewood. The only bright spot is that there's plenty of talk in the financial world of Best Buy going belly up. Perhaps then this terrible building and its oversized parking lot can be repurposed by a retailer interested in something other than rehashing the greatest hits of 90's strip mall suburbia.
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