Comments on: Down with City Hall!!

By: Lamar White, Jr

Lamar White, Jr — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:14:04 +0000

Thank you Mr. Bushnell.

And thank you for your service to our community.

By: Richard Bushnell

Richard Bushnell — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:38:24 +0000

Lamar: You have an excellent vision for our city and area, keep up the good work. Needless to say, I love Central Louisiana and it vast heritage. I am very proud and delighted you have come home to make a difference.

Richard Bushnell

By: Lamar White, Jr

Lamar White, Jr — Sat, 10 May 2008 06:04:45 +0000

Drew, thank you for this post. The old City Hall appeared to be an exceptional structure that conformed with and complemented Alexandria’s Downtown. For a number of reasons, as Darren alludes, there was an impulse to replace the symbols and institutions of the Old South during the 1950s and 60s in the name of “urban renewal.” Unfortunately, we didn’t end up renewing anything; we actually unintentionally destroyed some of our most important and unique assets– either through demolition or neglect.

And now we have to mitigate that destruction, because, ultimately, one of Alexandria’s most important features is its access to a navigable waterway. It’s the reason Alexander Fulton and Thomas Harris Maddox (your ancestor, right?) founded Alexandria, and despite decades of dizzying sprawl, Downtown still has all of the elements it needs for true renewal.

This is, in part, an issue of educating the public on what exactly is available Downtown (and what can and will be available).

It’s also about changing the cynical and negative mindset that many have about Downtown due to years of planning that never seems to come to fruition, private sector complacency, and bureaucratic fragmentation.

By: Darren Green

Darren Green — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:56:45 +0000

Drew,

You are right on target. City Hall along with many other buildings in our downtown that were designed and constructed during the “Urban Renewal” period are architectural abominations. (Apologies to my friends at BH&B) Jeff Carbo, a local Landscape Architect, actually did a plan for the Randolph administration that showed what the space could look like with City Hall and the Mini Park converted to a public greenspace with underground parking…much like Union Square in San Fransisco.