Council meets on Monday, and Mayor Hoy finally makes the move to initiate right-priced parking downtown. Hooray!
The Downtown Advisory Board has been asking about it for years.
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| Request to move to right-priced parking last year |
The Climate Action Plan calls for it.
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| Time for TL24 and right-priced parking! |
The Congestion Relief Task Force called for it.
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| Congestion Relief Task Force called for it |
There are so many studies and policy aims that call for right-priced parking. They all converge.
Alas, people cling to their mania for free parking, even when it is counter-productive. You might recall the parking wars from nearly a decade ago. Back in 2013 the Parking Task Force recommended right-priced parking, but the threat of a voter referral led the City to back down. |
| September 7th and September 23rd, 2013 |
Maybe now there's finally been enough general talk about the high cost of free parking that Mayor Hoy's effort won't be such an uphill push and we can finally get over the hump. Free parking could not keep JC Penney and Nordstrom. It is not the indispensable ingredient to downtown success. Continuing to think of downtown as a drive-to, destination mall and regional shopping center, rather than as our most urbanized neighborhood and a place for housing, a place for people to live, will only accelerate loss and unwanted change. New business will follow and serve new housing and people.
- See previous notes downtown parking here. (Scroll to the end and work backwards for some on the parking wars of 2013-14.)
The City will also conduct a first reading for designating the Civic Center as a local historic resource. There will be a hearing later. (See "Designating the Civic Center as Local Historic Resource: At the HLC" for previous notes here.)
Most of the research on the Civic Center has been aimed at buttressing the case for it as an important historic and aesthetic development. So the clips and history bits in Staff Reports and discussions are selected with a bias to support that claim and are mainly positive. But some of the cross-currents, criticism, and other detail might be interesting or revealing also, and maybe there will be more to say.
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| Looking from Commercial to Liberty at creek Statesman, 10 November 1964 |
Here's a brief earlier mention of it as a candidate site in 1964. We'll be looking for any notes on demolition and loss.
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| Capital Journal, 21 August 1972 |
A few days after its dedication, the afternoon paper seemed over-optimistic, but also highlighted bright painted color over the concrete:
It also is a pleasant place to work, to do business in, and just to visit. We especially like the central plaza, the inner courtyard of city hall, and reflecting pool. These are expensive feature, but we think they're worth it. They provide a special feel and atmosphere that most office buildings and complexes don't have. Some taxpayers no doubt will fuss because the city went first class, but we think most people will feel as we do that the extra cost is money well spent...
The design, site and decorating are mildly controversial. Some object to the exposed aggregate, the "heaviness" of the buildings, and the contemporary design. We think the design will wear well, just as the Capitol has despite its break in the 1930s with then-traditional capitol architecture. The deep purple and bright orange trim of the buildings isn't universally popular either....
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| Statesman, 11 August 1972 |
A little earlier the morning paper suggested something that I don't remember seeing discussed.
The original installation for Bruce West's cube was at City Hall!
From 1972, with more overestimation and talk of color also:
There now is a way for citizens to work off steam against City Hall, giving vent to their frustrations, if any, in a physical way. It has been provided by the chromium cube in the lobby of the City Hall in the Civic Center.
This piece of art work, created by Bruce West, reflects the images of passersby like the mirrors in a funhouse. This could serve to defuse the anger of any irate citizens. But if this isn't sufficient, a slap of the hand on the chromium cube produces a most marvelous and satisfying sound...
The Civic Center itself is a form of sculpture, with its huge concrete forms, especially in the City Hall, providing unexpected patterns and vistas. The dramatic colors and wide use of plantings help take away the austerity of the concrete. It has been predicted that artists of national reputation will want to have their works displayed in this setting.
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| Current site, February 2015 |
The cube is really lost at its current installation in front of the McGilchrist block on State and Liberty. Restoring it to City Hall where its crumpled rectangular form is a playful echo - distorted mirror even - of the Civic Center's forms should be given strong consideration. It makes a lot more sense there. Other art would be a better match for the street corner.
And just bullets for the rest.
- On the Urban Renewal Agency side of the agenda, there's a bunch of short term bond issuances. Ordinarily they might seem routine, but one is "not to exceed $173,790" for "urban renewal projects" in the single-lot Jory TIF district on the former State Hospital north Campus. The other is "not to exceed $1,400,000" for "urban renewal projects" in the McGilchrist Urban Renewal Area. The projects are unnamed, however, and it would be nice for the City to specify them.
- The Historic Landmarks Commission presents their annual report with 2023 work plan. It has the annual photo contest winners and some other awards also. I didn't see anything really new in it or anything more to remark on.
- And the City proposes to vacate another stub section of First Street NW. Since it is right between Edgewater and Second Street, there is no real loss of connectivity in vacating it, and this seems unproblematic. As the Staff Report says it "provides limited transportation function." The City is right. The quarterly Economic Development Report says design work on Second Street is "nearly finished...the design includes additional safety measures such as reduced speed limit and crosswalks at multiple intersections. Construction is planned to start in spring 2023."
3 comments:
The Mill has a couple of relevant notes, originally part of the Salem Online History project:
- A list of artwork that suggests the Cube might have been at City Hall early in this century, "City of Salem Art Collection."
- And Wes Sullivan's reminiscence from 2002, "The Development of Salem’s Civic Center."
Mayor Hoy's motion for Staff to come back with a right-priced parking proposal (or set of options) carried, with Councilor Nishioka absent and Councilors Gwyn and Nordyke opposed. Councilor Nordyke was a little weird in her opposition. There must be some kind of story or subtext there.
Also! The reason we haven't seen parking studies in the last few years, Director Rutherford said, was because the City quit doing them in 2018. The conclusions were the same, year after year, and it had become an obvious waste of money to get the same conclusion over and over. They will be doing a new one this year, it sounded like, with the new residential and hotel development downtown. So that will be interesting to see.
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