Down with City Hall!!

…the building people…I’m talking about the building!

Kudos to Lamar for the great bit on the Bentley. It truly is the centerpiece of our area and the crown jewel of any successful effort — whatever eventual form it may take to develop our downtown. However, there is one stark reality that needs to be addressed quite openly and seriously regarding downtown development and the viability of the Bentley in general — City Hall.

Although the photos on the previous story are great and truly reflect the glamour of our gran dame hotel, the photo above captures the reality of the situation. When the Bentley was constructed it formed one boundary of a dynamic city square with greenspace and a smaller historic city hall in the centre. That’s no longer the case.

This brings to the forefront a reality of our redevelopment reality — we screwed up.

Alexandria City Hall, 1923. This structure was demolished to make room for the current building. Louisiana History Museum.

Sorry, there’s no other way to say it. Like so many other failed urban cores we embraced an attitude of out with the old and in with the new from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. This process stripped our downtown core of many of its historically and culturally significant assets. We lost theatres, the opera, our department stores, our shopping district, most of our restaurants, many of our churches. Much of what was lost was replaced with buildings or parking lots with very little to like about them.

Alexandria’s old City Hall with the Hotel Bentley in the background. Louisiana History Museum.

The Town Talk is now centered around a very warehouse like facility occupying otherwise usable riverfront space. The public library sits in a mass of concrete does little for books but does look remarkably like Drs. Denley and Culpepper’s office on Jackson put on some sort of architectural steroids. Then came the 90’s with the Broccato-Heinberg effect. That is, the selection of an immediately dated yet continuously repeated theme throughout the city in which a single firm or two were chosen to reshape the appearance of the metro area. This resulted in the Amphitheatre, the Murray Bridge Outlook, work at the zoo, the various welcome signs to the city, the Mall and several other locations with an eerily similar and rather 80’sish appearance accented by bold shapes and pastel hues. It’s now something we will have to work into future planning, and it’s not all bad, but it does show the folly of shortsighted planning.

Even with all the destructive effects of the last half century on our downtown, we do still have a core that we can work with. We have the heart of a city center with some great anchors — the Bentley on one side, the Capitol One building on the other, the Commercial Tower on the other, and the River finishing it off. We still have to figure out what to do with 3rd Street beyond Murray — to determine if those buildings are truly worth saving — if they can be reworked into something usable and returned to commerce. Or, do they need to be razed and rebuilt as functionally modern but historically sensitive structures. Whatever happens in this area is going to key — or rather the keystone of future development efforts downtown.

There is a first step however that must be taken. City Hall needs to go. That building was a mistake. There’s no way to say it other than that. That space currently occupied by City hall and the adjacent parking lots should be a public square.

City hall has had some good effects. It has shown that there is demand for public meeting space such as its main hall. It has shown that even 50 years ago underground parking is feasible in downtown Alexandria. But the building does not serve the function it should. It’s too small for government, too big for its location, and is acting a s hindrance to development rather than a supplement to it.

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We should take the lead of other successful cities such as Boston and Providence and create a government centre — a more centralized, walkable zone in which city, local, parish, state and federal government offices are co-located, share facilities and resources, and provide a one-stop service point for citizens and business. That government centre almost already exists in downtown Alexandria near the Interstate centered around Murray Street. The city, school board, extraneous courts and other offices spread around the downtown area should focus on relocating to this area and fully developing it.

The current location of city hall would much better serve the citizens and business of the area as a multi-use green zone. With the elimination of city hall and the adjacent block, two levels of underground parking could be constructed on site which would provide the needed (and now missing) parking for existing hotels, restaurants and businesses. Atop this could be a pedestrian mall and park similar to Jackson Square in New Orleans with an additional performance space and outdoor stage/amphitheatre.

This could be the impetus for development the centre of our downtown core needs. A pedestrian mall in which people can shop, relax, listen to music, enjoy their city and one day hopefully stroll through the rest of a redeveloped downtown to their homes and condos throughout.

We need to be brave enough to take the needed first step, and that is a commitment from our city leaders to return our public square to the public, tear down city hall, and reintroduce commerce to the heart of downtown.