City Hall Relocation May Have to Wait

With officials in Boston debating a plan proposed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to relocate City Hall to the South Boston waterfront, City Council President Michael F. Flaherty presented a measure last week that would require a more exhaustive study of the plan and delay the project.

But Harvard Design School professor Alex Krieger, who said that he has “spent seven years trying to improve City Hall Plaza,” contends that none of the current back-and-forth argument will have any effect on when the new City Hall is built.

“It will take years of discussion and arguments before anything happens,” said Krieger, who currently teaches Literature and Arts B-20, “Designing the American City,” the third largest class at the college this spring. “There is lots of support for and animosity against the building.”

According to Flaherty, the mayor’s plan was proposed without proper discussion of it its impact.

“We’re not so much slowing down the process as trying to know what we’re dealing with,” said Andrew P. Kenneally, a spokesperson for Councillor Flaherty. “The proposal needs a comprehensive study.”

The order filed by the councillor argues that before the mayor’s plans should proceed, “an accounting of the current City Hall” needs to be done, as well as “a study, similar in size and scope to the 1997 Boston Convention & Exhibition Center Report.”

The order also points out that “considerable effort was undertaken by the public, community leaders and the Boston Redevelopment Authority” to engineer several plans for the waterfront, and “in all those plans, the impact of constructing a new city hall was never considered or discussed.”

Krieger said that he understands the mayor’s intentions, and that the current City Hall facility is outdated.

“Today, less of the bureaucracy needs to be housed centrally. The building is also very expensive, difficult to maintain, and not very flexible,” Krieger said.

“[The mayor] thinks this building is ugly,” said the professor in practice of urban design. “He’s trying to build a legacy for himself.”

Still, Krieger said, the building represents the “icon of an era.”

“In 1970, it was thought to be the greatest achievement in urban America at the time,” he said. “It symbolized renewal for Boston.”

He added that the building was “once voted the greatest building in America by a bicentennial poll of designers and planners.”

Students in Krieger’s course, “Designing the American City,” were asked this semester to complete a project examining the public spaces of Government Center—where City Hall is located—and the nearby Post Office Square.

Laura H. Chirot ’08, a student in the class, said that there was no comparison between the two.

“Post Office Square is a good social space, with trees and benches,” Chirot said. “Government Center is a huge brick expanse, and is very inhospitable. City Hall looks like a dungeon or fortress.”