City Hall Discussion - Redevelopment - Preservation - Relocation

Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

Why not? It's sensitive to the original building, and it looks far better than most of what we've been getting lately.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

It looks like a nice condo building. But, um, really?
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

By putting government into the square, it will prompt other development and bring back a vitality? Count me skeptical. Does government building ever generate private investment? Shouldn't the market determine what gets built, not artificial stimuli?
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

City Hall is not being moved to Dudley Square, so the first sentence of that article makes no sense.

Moving 1000+ employees into a now-vacant building can only be good for Dudley.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

I keep reading how the decentralization of government offices is actually a bad thing because it makes it hard for people to get there, yet cities across the country keep doing it anyway (including Boston). I'm sure Dudley Square needs development, but it's not as easy to get to as downtown.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

Dudley Square is much closer to the geographic center of town than Government Center is. Is it also closer to the population center? I don't know if that's true.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

It may be closer to the geographical center of Boston, but its transportation connections are very poor compared to government center.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

One things for sure, with all the transit in place at Government Center, what ever gets put in there needs to be large
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

commuter guy said:
It may be closer to the geographical center of Boston, but its transportation connections are very poor compared to government center.
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It's sadly amusing that the whole notion of the branch office in Dudley was floated in response to complaints about the poor transit connections at the Seaport, and that Dudley and the site of the new city hall will be connected - in theory - by Phase III of the Silver Line. The entire moving project has provided tacit acknowledgement that this multibillion dollar transit project isn't going to be very useful to anybody.

Menino could have put pressure on the EOT/MBTA to build a real transit link, but he's too damn rail-phobic to do that. So we get two buildings that few can easily get to - despite over a billion being spent to connect them - and a nice view for the mayor in the South Boston Parking Lot.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

From everyone's favorite, Scott Van Soarhees:

The Boston Herald said:
Local architect/activist group launches fight to save City Hall

 By Scott Van Voorhis | Saturday, May 17,


ddc65c1b42_cityhall.jpg

Photo by Nancy Lane (file)


A group of local architects and activists has launched a campaign to save City Hall from the wrecking ball.

Citizens for City Hall kicked off its mission by passing out leaflets at this week?s American Institute of Architects convention, which has drawn thousands of architects from around the world.

The group?s roster includes Herb Gleason, the city?s legal pointman under former Mayor Kevin White, and Pauline Chase-Harrell, former chairwoman of the Boston Landmarks Commission and a well-known city preservationist.
The preservation effort comes as Mayor Thomas M. Menino continues to promote the idea of selling City Hall and building a new municipal headquarters on the waterfront.

However, while some deride the 1960s-era building as an unsightly concrete bunker, Citizens for City Hall calls it one of the most architecturally significant structures in the world.

Instead of building a new city headquarters on the waterfront, Menino should focus on fixing up City Hall and turning it into a green, state-of-the-art public building.

?You have to pay some respect and some credit to the people who said forty years ago this was one of the most important buildings of the 20th century in the world,? Gleason said. ?It was enormously praised.?

Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Menino, said the mayor sees an opportunity for a new headquarters, not just on the South Boston waterfront, but also in Roxbury?s Dudley Square, where some workers would move under Menino?s plan.

However, the mayor has never argued for tearing down the building and would be supportive of efforts to restore it after it is sold, she said.
?If people can reuse this building, he thinks that is a wonderful idea,? Joyce said. ?He has always said what happens here is really up to who purchases it.?

?1850? keeps lofts real

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view.bg?articleid=1094623
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Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

I have a "Save City Hall" button that I wear on my bag.

You can blame ablarc, justin and Beton Brut.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

From Robert Campbell via The Globe:

The Boston Globe said:
A new perspective on City Hall

Exhibition invites a reconsideration of the building

By Robert Campbell Globe Correspondent / May 24, 2008


A fine new exhibition reminds us how much we'd miss Boston City Hall if we let Mayor Menino get rid of it.

The mayor, you'll recall, announced last year that he hated City Hall and planned to sell it and its plaza for private development, then build a new City Hall somewhere else.

The exhibition, to say the least, opposes that idea. The title tells you so immediately: "Designing the Great Building of 20th-Century Boston."

The show is at Wentworth Institute on Huntington Avenue. Gary Wolf, a Boston architect who admires City Hall, has assembled a show of more than 40 original drawings of this famous and controversial building, all made by the architects while they were designing it.

It doesn't matter whether you love or hate City Hall. (I think it's a great building that needs a lot of reinvention.) There are plenty of Bostonians on both sides of that question. But anyone with a serious interest in architecture will profit from this exhibit.

It reminds us, for one thing, of the vanishing art of architectural drawing. Today architects draw on computer screens, with results that often feel canned and mechanical. Here the drawings have been made with pen and pencil. They display a half-forgotten delicacy of tone and presence of the human hand.

The drawings, too, help us follow the progress of the winning design, as it grew from early sketches through to the final version. Almost all the drawings were created by the two architects of City Hall themselves. They were young men, Michael McKinnell and Gerhard Kallmann, who in 1961 were teaching architecture at Columbia. That was the year Boston announced a national design competition for a new City Hall. The two professors entered and their design won, beating out 255 others. Neither Kallmann nor McKinnell had, at that time, yet designed or built a building under his own name.

"Designing the Great Building" comes at a moment when a battle is being waged over the future of City Hall. It coincides with the emergence of a new advocacy group, which calls itself "Citizens for City Hall."

Herbert Gleason, who worked in City Hall for 11 years as head of the legal department, is the group's spokesman. Gleason remembers a time when Boston was so proud of the building that Queen Elizabeth II was entertained there. "The most endangered buildings are always those of the previous generation," he says. Among other active members are Wolf, architect Joan Goody, and City Councilor Michael Flaherty. And Docomomo, an international organization devoted to the preservation of modern architecture, is also now taking an interest in City Hall.

"Designing the Great Building" was timed to coincide with the annual national convention of the American Institute of Architects, which was held in Boston last week. City Hall has become a national issue among architects. The AIA's board offered to issue a public statement supporting the building. But local architects and preservationists asked it not to, at least for now.

It's not that Boston architects don't care. But a BSA leader who'd rather not be quoted describes them as intimidated, afraid that Menino will try to get back at architects who take a stand. Or that approvals from the Boston Redevelopment Authority or the Board of Zoning Appeals will get more difficult.

Marvin Malecha, by contrast, the dean of the school of architecture at North Carolina State University, who in 2009 will be president of the national AIA, promises: "The AIA will certainly not stay on the sidelines during my watch. We will not be silent."

The mayor himself seems to be as unsure as everyone else. Despite his repeated assertions that he wants to get rid of City Hall, not much seems to be happening.

At a gathering at the AIA convention, he tried to win the love of architects by proposing a design competition for a new City Hall to be sited near Dudley Station. But also during the convention, the BRA, which hosted tours of the present building, produced a less than decisive handout for tour guides. It stated: "To date the proposal to move City Hall to city property on the South Boston waterfront has met with mixed reviews; no location study has begun, much less real planning or design work, to advance the notion, other than an assessment of city department space inventories and needs."

A softening real estate market, in any case, could hinder a profitable sale of City Hall and its plaza. So could legal entanglements, given that City Hall and its plaza were built as part of a federally subsidized urban renewal project.

Why do so many Bostonians think City Hall is ugly? There are at least four legitimate reasons.

One, City Hall is made of concrete, and in this country at least, concrete is a material we associate with practical things like bridge abutments and highway ramps, not with creative architecture (they feel differently about concrete in Japan and Europe).

Two, City Hall is appallingly maintained. "It's filthy and neglected," says Gleason, "with a hideous mess of security barriers."

Three, City Hall stands in City Hall Plaza, and the plaza is a miserable desert in summer and a tundra in winter.

And four, City Hall's interiors can be grim. Other architects of that era who worked in concrete, such as the French Le Corbusier or Harvard's Josep Lluis Sert, relieved the grayness with accents of intense color. City Hall needs much more interior light and color than it has.

All of those issues can be addressed. Nobody's against making changes, least of all the original architects, both of whom are still around and whose firm, now Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, has long been prominent here. They write: "We regarded the construction of the building to be the start of a process that would engage successive generations of the citizenry in the embellishment, decoration, and adornment of the robust armature that we had designed."

It's interesting, in that connection, that the Wentworth exhibit contains, besides the winning drawings, a display of ideas from various sources for renovating and updating the building and plaza. One that stands out is a proposal by retired architect Robertson Ward for a system of heliostats, rooftop mirrors that would move with the sun and reflect sunshine deep down into the building's interior.

Even if you're in the majority who think City Hall in its present form is ugly, here's a thought:

Ugly people can be great. So can ugly buildings.

City Hall is powerful and memorable, with the rugged majesty of a fortress or, closer to home, with the muscular grandeur of the famous generation of "Boston Granite Style" commercial buildings of the late 19th century. Not all great Boston architecture, remember, is delicate or made of red brick. This amazing building deserves to be saved, not demolished or humiliated by conversion to a commercial use.

Looking at City Hall's craggy features, you're reminded that at the opening in 1968, the Boston Pops played Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance."

Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.
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? Copyright 2008
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More information on the exhibition can be found at WIT's site or in this event post.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

Interesting article for sure. I too wish the US embraced concrete construction as much as Asia and Europe. There's something to be said for City Hall's uniqueness.

I don't think it should be moved...But, what if the cannons/revolution were moved not to the seaport (as a hypothetical that has been proposed on other threads), but here? Traffic would be a mess, but it would further enliven the place for public use.

I'm sure you all saw the over,under proposal for boston city hall last year?....? they do like pink. Actually kind of hard to tell exactly what it is from their site...but related to city hall.

http://www.overcommaunder.com/

and scroll down.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

The mayor wants to get out of an old, nonfunctional building that costs the taxpayers a bundle to maintain and heat. He wants to continue to support development in the seaport so moving City Hall there would kill two birds with one stone. IMO, it's a pretty good idea.

For those who hate the idea of City Hall being less centrally located, another option is to sell City Hall and then build a new one on part of the exiting plaza. There would be plenty of room left over for "much needed" green space, new streets, a soaring highrise, and of course ground floor retail.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

ablarc -- I'm guessing that when you said this:
Originally Posted by ablarc
21. don't be afraid to risk a little hokeyness
Click to expand...
this proposal isn't the sort of thing you had in mind...
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

tocoto said:
The mayor wants to get out of an old, nonfunctional building that costs the taxpayers a bundle to maintain and heat. He wants to continue to support development in the seaport so moving City Hall there would kill two birds with one stone. IMO, it's a pretty good idea.
Click to expand...

Since no study has been done we don't know what would be cheaper, to fix up the city hall with new heating, a/c, and insulation, or to build a new one. With the current economic situation I don't know how appealing this building will be to developers.

For those who hate the idea of City Hall being less centrally located, another option is to sell City Hall and then build a new one on part of the exiting plaza. There would be plenty of room left over for "much needed" green space, new streets, a soaring highrise, and of course ground floor retail.
Click to expand...

I like this better.
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

Boston Herald - June 25, 2008
Pol slams $800g City Hall study
Mayor eyes waterfront land
By Jessica Van Sack
Wednesday, June 25, 2008

A leading Hub pol yesterday blasted the Menino administration for leveraging $800,000 to study the mayor?s vision of a new City Hall on the waterfront as public schools struggle with a deficit and summer youth jobs are in high demand.

?How many more parking fines will we have to increase to fund this project that has not even secured the approval of the council, and more importantly, Boston taxpayers?? said City Councilor Michael Flaherty.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is about to solicit bids for the contract to investigate whether South Boston?s Drydock 4, part of the city-owned Marine Industrial Park, has the durability that a new municipal headquarters - or any major construction - would require.

Flaherty ripped the BRA at a hearing held by Councilor Stephen J. Murphy, chairman of the committee on Ways and Means. Murphy negotiated for the BRA, a notoriously autonomous agency, to detail its $17 million to the council for the first time.

?At a time when we?re talking about the potential to close schools and youth violence is on the rise, is this really where we should be spending our focus as a city?? Flaherty said at the hearing. ?I have yet to find a citizen or a taxpayer who thinks this is a good idea.?

Flaherty voted for this year?s budget, but individual councilors cannot veto specific budget items. They must approve or disapprove of an entire spending package.

BRA officials said that the city has to find out what can be built on its waterfront parcel eventually and disputed the notion that now is a bad time to do so.

?We?re probably several years away from a new facility,? said BRA director John Palmieri.

The study is part of a five-year, $1.5 billion capital budget plan, which sets aside a total of $2 million to investigate the feasibility of a new City Hall on the waterfront, according to the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. It also includes funding for a new Charlestown police station, a Mattapan branch library and other projects.

The mayor?s budget chief Lisa Signori yesterday defended the $800,000 waterfront study, the cost of which will be paid down over time.

?I?m confident we?ve presented a balanced plan and that we have a capital plan strategically investing in important assets throughout the city, which are investments that last for decades,? Signori said.

Flaherty, eyeing a mayoral bid, has sharpened his criticism of the Menino administration in recent months as he quietly meets with business leaders and politicians in and around the Hub to secure support. He declined to comment on his ambitions yesterday.

He has rebuked Menino?s ambitions to offload City Hall at Government Center and build a new municipal headquarters on the fast-growing South Boston waterfront.

City Hall, built in 1969, has been long derided by critics as a hulking, concrete fortress, but others have questioned the logistical nightmare of moving it.
Click to expand...
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

Let the campaign for Mayor begin!
 
Re: Menino Proposes Selling City Hall

I wholeheartedly agree. Its ridiculous. While I think the Old City Hall is ugly and a new one would be nice, its totally irresponsible to launch and $800k waterfront study when schools don't have shit for resources, and not to mention this comes days after there were talks of running parking meters until 2am. This city has plenty of problems where that money could be used much more efficiently.
 
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