Old Pastel Town Neighborhood District
The Old Pastel Town Neighborhood District is the fourth neighborhood district of Gardinya Lyra. It's on the western edge of the city, on the ParaPoppy Penisola, separated from the rest of the city by the Great TurkisBlau River. While it is known as the fourth district, some of the earliest buildings in the founding days of the town were built here before it was decided that Seven Flowers Island would make a better site for the city. The Federation Building and the first and second neighborhood districts were built on Seven Flowers Island as the beginnings of the town on ParaPoppy floundered into almost ruin (a slum of sorts, home to some of the worst black market trading of the day, that no one seems to talk about or remember anymore). It wasn't until talk of bringing in the University that the town needed to expand for additional residents so the Council demolished what was left of the original settlement, and built the Old Pastel Town Neighborhood District in its place.
There is a much simpler look to the buildings of Old Pastel Town. The buildings are taller by at least three to four stories compared to their Seven Flowers counterparts, with less decorations on the outside (for instance: almost no intricate fountains like the rest of the city, none of the arches and decorative columns of the Thousand Arches District, none of the elaborate glass and ironwork windows and garden window boxes of the Butterfly Garden District, none of the flower and ivy hand-carved work-work trim of Northern Pine District, it doesn't even get the decorative gold and iron railings so prominent in the Bright Bay District). The buildings are more packed together with fewer sections of wasted landscaping space, fewer parks and fewer public gardens. The only nod to form over function in this neighborhood district is the color of the buildings. Instead of the whites and tans that the rest of the city seems to be, all the buildings are painted in soft pastels with brightly colored doors with little regard for what other colors are around them, truly embracing the rainbow starlight magic of the place.
Even with the roots of this district almost completely forgotten, there is a weird perspective around this part of town. Some say the peninsula is haunted - maybe because the Mourning Lovers Maze just might be - or maybe because sometimes when people disappear, it's rumored that the local gang throws people who cross them over the sides of the Havenside cliff. This perspective might be because Old Pastel Town is part industrial, with the Rainbow Starlight Energy Plant being built on the Penisula, instead of ruining the beauty of Seven Flowers Island, or how, with the building of that power plant, cheaper housing was built near it for the workers. A walk towards those cliffs from the energy plant and you'll notice that the neighborhood might not have completely lost it's black market roots, especially as you get nearer and nearer to Sugar Pine Row. On that walk, you'll probably pass Zhenya Beach, which spans the eastern edge of the peninsula between Stolitz and Xandrish Bridges. And even the locals will tell you, there are better places in the city if you are looking for a little relaxation in the sunshine and sand. Old Pastel Town has the reputation for being a place you have to be, instead of one you want to be.
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