On Monday Council approved an ask for the Legislature.
Celebrate Salem Civic Center’s 50 years. Prepare Peace Plaza for 50th anniversary - August 18, 2022 - and years to come as an attractive, welcoming community asset. Funding for this work would restore the fountain and add greenspace and accessible parking to Peace Plaza area.
 |
| Peace Plaza desolate in the early evening, 2013 (click to enlarge) |
The Staff Report was a little vague and Salem Reporter shared more clarity:
Courtney Knox Busch, Salem's strategic initiatives manager, told the legislative committee that project would cost about $1 million.
 |
| Parking on West side, from October 2013 concept |
Probably the City is thinking about dusting off the concept plan from the early 2010s, when the hope was for a new Police Station at Mirror Pond. These drawings show a new parking area where there had been a gridded lawn with trees. The pavers have been removed already, and it seems like they might already be heading down that path.
 |
| Gridded lawn area would become parking |
But converting this to parking would be a total waste and drain on the plaza. There are already parking garages south of the Library and north of City Hall. The one on the north side is no longer used by Police and should be available. Parking is not a problem. If parking becomes a problem, paid parking, right-priced so 15% of stalls are always open, solves it.
The problem with Peace Plaza's inertness is inactive edges, not insufficient parking.
The edges are recessed from the sidewalks, the original arcaded entry to the Library no longer overlooks it, and there are no complementary businesses or attractors to supply foot traffic when the Library and City Hall are closed. Even with Southblock, there are few residences nearby. When the municipal buildings are closed, there is no reason to visit the plaza. It is not in fact a real plaza, a center urban life and activity. It is peaceful like the eternal peace of the dead.
 |
| Parking isn't what makes a plaza work via Twitter |
Parking would further degrade the plaza. We should remember Ada Louise Huxtable's words from 1970:
Some day, some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution. The price for Portland is already alarmingly high. But there are no easy answers, or no American city would be in trouble.
We should not be afraid to alter Peace Plaza, as its current configuration does not work, but any interventions should be coordinated with changes to City Hall. The whole site plan needs adjustment, not merely the plaza. The Library, Peace Plaza, and City Hall were conceived as a whole. The whole has problems, but the initial changes to the Library in the first remodel in the early 90s broke that whole and made the problems worse. Adding a parking lot will further break it. If we are going to break it more, we should do so more carefully and constructively, not merely for a one-off 50th anniversary and by an application of our universal treatment of more parking, a 20th century patent medicine, but as part of the whole seismic retrofit and remodel of City Hall. The whole ensemble should be considered.
MOAR PARKING!!! is not the solution.
 |
| Washington Post, front page today |
It's also not consistent with recommendations in the Climate Action Plan, which recommends we broadly reduce our reliance on parking and the extra driving trips too much parking induces.
 |
| Less parking, not more - Priority Strategies |
"Free" money from the Legislature might seem like a great thing, but in this instance it would be better to defer changes to Peace Plaza for the bond and the seismic retrofit of City Hall. The whole of the Civic Center needs a rethink, and more parking just makes that more difficult.
Previously see:
- "Move Peace Plaza! It Doesn't Work - In Fact, It's Broke!" (2013)
- "Two Police Stations: Eugene's Car-Dependence and the Civic Center's Desolateness" (2013)
- "A Postscript on Peace Plaza: The Library Remodel Broke it!" (2013)
- On the Sculpture Garden's inertness, "An Avenging Angel of Autoism and Ada Louise Huxtable at the Sculpture Garden" (2014)
- And a moment when Peace Plaza was gloriously full, the exception that proves the problem: "Eclipse and a Delightful Fullness in Downtown" (2017)
And related on our fondness for ornamental emptiness and its autoism:
4 comments:
100%! Less parking is more better. People over cars.
Whether the corporate campus concept, placement, and design of City Hall and its various elements were flawed from the start could be debated endlessly. Obviously, it made sense at the time. We've learned (or re-learned) a lot about what makes successful urban spaces over the past 50 years. The question is what do we do with these spaces moving forward.
I guess the options are: (1) maintain them, (2) neglect them, (3) sell them, (4) improve them, or (5) repurpose them. It seems the City has chosen option #4, which seems reasonable approach. Peace Plaza may never function like its designer hoped for the very reasons you identify, but it can still be green space that captures carbon, provides some urban habitat, helps clean the air and be place for employees, library patrons, and visitors to enjoy. Perhaps we should recognize the plaza aspect has failed and call it something else.
Overall, I think these designed green spaces on the south edge of downtown will become a significant community asset as Salem grows and increases in density. Future generations will appreciate what their predecessors set aside for them. in fact, I think the shortcomings in design of the Civic Center Complex and Mill Race Park matter far less than the simple lack of urban density and downtown inhabitants. Planned connectivity improvements such as the bridge connecting Mirror Pond with Riverfront Park will also add value to these spaces.
At the Council meeting Monday (12/13) I thought I heard Courtney KB say something about using the money to restore the Peace Plaza fountain. Every day I walk by the ex-fountain in Wilson Park which the Governor turned off years ago on account of the drought.
I am old enough to remember taking my children to the Library and letting them play in the fountain there. It was pretty pleasant experience and then we would go watch the ducks on the pond. With some benches, trees and maybe a place to get a snack, that area will be revived. Parking is not needed as there are many places now that the police cars are gone. I think the parking near the plaza is just a ruse to let administrators a quick in and out of the building. If they wanted to add to the parallel parking that already exists, maybe that would be ok, but a whole parking lot is not needed.
The Peace Plaza in its heyday was a wonderful place. Changing the entrance was a blow to its use, but the fountain was the key element and the little cafe too. Food carts could be permitted I think and it would be an asset.
I think that they removed several trees. They need to replace them as well and add to the landscaping.
There used to be a citizen advisory committee for the Peace Plaza. They would arrange for activities to be held there. That needs to come back.
Councilor Hoy wanted to rename a city street for Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe the Plaza could be renamed and use as a place for public celebrations around equity and peace.
Post a Comment