Perched as we are on an edge between recession and recovery, where economic indicators offer both the terrible (high unemployment) and the hopeful (growth domestic product up 5.7 percent in the last quarter of 2009), the rush of foreclosures filed against Krzysztof Karbowski’s properties, detailed in this week’s Chicago Journal, are altogether depressing.

Foreclosures sap wealth from neighborhoods and can lead to crumbling, vacant and dangerous buildings. And two of the blocks where Karbowski owns properties now in foreclosure — the 1300 block of S. Michigan and the 2400 block of W. Madison — are important corridors with tremendous potential in a better economy. They can’t afford any setbacks. They can’t afford any blight.

The West Madison stretch where Parkway Bank has filed four foreclosure suits against Karbowski is sandwiched between a future Pete’s Fresh Market on the east and a soon-to-open Johnny’s Ice House hockey rink on the west. South Michigan Avenue is already home to entrepreneurs running tremendous locally owned shops like Panozzo’s Italian Market and the South Loop Wine Cellar.

Karbowski is well known to Chicago Journal; the paper’s old West Town edition closely tracked his developments in Wicker Park and Bucktown, and the battles they engendered in those areas.

The best out-route for Madison and Michigan is for Karbowski to find buyers for these properties, and sell. The mounting legal actions against him suggest he’s completely in over his head and if he can’t find a buyer, let the banks take a go at it. Yes, the prices will drop. And that won’t help the neighborhoods either, not to mention the banks.

There’s a bigger story at play here. Looking at the flood of foreclosures zinging Karbowski and the neighborhoods where he’s built and bought, we can’t help but ask why.

Why did the banks extend him all of these loans? Why did everyone involved in the formerly bubbly real estate economy assume housing prices would rise forever? Why couldn’t anyone, the press included, see the bigger picture that led us to the economic crisis that started to unfold in 2007?

Questions to mull as we try to emerge from this recession. And mess.