Wallingford's beloved dive bar Moon Temple will soon be demolished to make way for new development. That's tragic news in and of itself, but it gets worse: The current plan (see it here) is to raze and replace the one-story building with basically another single-story structure—likely a CVS or another a sprawling strip-mall-esque drugstore—along with a surface parking lot for 25 cars.

The plans, as of now, are to turn these three storefronts:

Into this:

If you have a problem with this scenario—replacing a single-story structure with another fucking single-story structure along a strip ripe for building taller—tonight's your chance to speak up. Today, at 6:30, at the University Heights Community Center at 50th and the Ave (room 209), there's a design review meeting.

To be clear, there's no real chance to "save" Moon Temple, and not every building needs saving. But there's a chance to influence the design process and residents will hopefully take up the fight for better development. As Slog Tipper DOUG. says, "This is reminiscent of the single-story Walgreens that was proposed years ago at Pine and Broadway on Capitol Hill. That Walgreens was eventually built, but thanks to the outcry of neighbors it was not single-story, and a structure was built to be more in line with urban development."

Wallingford gets a bad rap from all my south-of-the-ship-canal coworkers; it's too white, it's full of toddlers in vegan shoes on their way to toddler hot yoga, it's a stupid sleepy village of bungalows. Well, it's my home village, and if ever there was a non-vegan-toddler-friendly spot in the whole joint, it's Moon Temple—a dive bar so divey it can hardly be described. (The Chinese food is fucking great, too.) I am mournfully sad to see it go, but good lord, if they replace it, they certainly should take into account the three other drugstores right nearby, which run the gamut from hippie store to local drugstore to giant corporate drugstore already, not to mention the fact that this is a city in the year 2013, and we should be building accordingly.