THEY'RE NUMBER 1

One half-block north, Doc Honeywell peers through the plate-glass window of the next Post #1, still under construction. "This'll be my office, right here, facing the street," he says. "I won't be able to change clothes in my office anymore. In the back there, we'll have something of a lounge area and a partial museum. There'll be a small kitchen and a meeting area. How we'll fit all our stuff into this amount of space, I have no idea."

But packing is a priority. The move must be completed by July 1 so that developer Bruce Berger, who arranged the building trade, can begin on his plans for the old post.

"I hear he'll raze it to the ground," Honeywell says, with a shrug.
"That's right," Berger says from his Cherokee Street office. "I want to do contemporary lofts. The front doors of the library and museum have been turned toward us. From the VFW land I bought, I can see the sunken gardens park, unobstructed views of the mountains and downtown. Things are booming."

So it's taps for the old post. It wouldn't make much of a foundation for a contemporary loft high-rise, and in any case, Berger has no sentimental attachment to the building.

"I've been in the lounge, but only a time or two," he says. "I think it's kind of dated. If they were going to keep it, it would need considerable refurbishing. But some of the old membership were very happy with it," he adds. "Even the way it was. Or that's what I understand.