I’ve been watching that god-awful fortress of a retaining wall around the London Road McDonald’s slowly bulge outward over the past months with a mixture of bemused amazement and horror. Now comes word via the News Tribune that the wall is being knocked down and rebuilt … as part of a cosmetic enhancement?
Well, I guess the structure is nearly two whole years old — long overdue for a facelift. And god knows, the thing defined grotesque from day one. Indeed, according to Brian Gist, Mickey-Dee’s regional marketing manager, this has nothing to do with any structural issues; it’s all about cosmetics:
“I am not familiar with a lean,” Gist said. “Our construction company was looking at it and said safety was never an issue. If there was a safety concern, it would have been addressed immediately.”
Now, I’m no engineer, but I have built a few retaining walls in my time, and to me, this one displayed ominous signs (such as an increasingly vertical slope) that it was readying to dump a good sized chunk of parking lot onto one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. You really couldn’t help noticing it from the drive-through at Burger King.
So what do you people think? Is there a new sense of corporate aesthetic on the menu at the golden arches — or are we being served?
