The Muddy Path to City Hall
No, I’m not talking about a muddy political path. Instead, I am talking about a real path in the bare dirt.
The above is now many make their way to city hall. When city hall officials closed the North entrance facing Market St to city hall this forced pedestrians, many city employees, to head through the grass to the East entrance facing. The third entrance, facing South, is open onto a public parking lot.
The path is well worn and it looks as though someone had perhaps even put down wood chips, possibly from this tree that had been cut down. The now closed entrance is to the left.
The well worn path, or “desire lines” per the lingo, leads to this tiny area to squeeze through. Welcome to City Hall. The least the could do is pave a sidewalk here to recognize the clear need.
Coming from the North and West as a pedestrian, as I now do, I can certainly say I take this path rather than go the long way around on the sidewalks. The city wants to make the Gateway Mall vibrant but has the adjacent pedestrian entrance closed! Uh, duh. The city needs to give serious consideration to the costs to re-open the Market side entrance — after all the building address is 1200 Market.
Maybe the City could take some of that “busy work” money they use for unnecessary alley paving and install a proper walkway. Classy peeps, those City Hall politicos.
Perhaps people should be more civilized and actually walk on the provided sidewalks AROUND the City Hall grounds instead of through the grass. It isn’t that much longer of a walk and a little extra walking won’t hurt anyone.
What people “should” do and what most people actually do do are two different things. Good design anticipates human behavior and provides for it. Autocratic design attempts to impose some expert’s will on the world. The simple answer – pave the “volunteer” path!
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Some assumptions – The east entrance “needs” to stay open so the mayor and other big wigs can continue to park in front of the building and have the nearest entrance open. The south entrance gets used a lot more than the north one did since that’s where the parking lot is. The west entrance needs to be open since it’s the only somewhat “accessible” one. That leaves the north one as being “least” used and/or “importatnt, and to save money on security, is now closed.
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The “real” answer to getting the north side reopened is to put a parking lot there – then money would be found to provide “security” 😉
Perhaps you could get the developer who paved the parking lot on Halliday to put a sidewalk in here. Wouldn’t need permits or anything…
Not to hijack a thread, but what ever happened with that driveway abomination? It is still there.
Urban Planning for Children: when grass is dead, it probably should be paved!
I recall several years back, the city put up a “Keep Off the Grass” sign at this location. When that failed, somebody decided to create that mulch path along the route that people were already walking. So at least they thought that far ahead. Really, does it make sense to pave this route? Probably it would be adequate to just lay a new layer of wood chips.
My other bugaboo is how the building inspectors, license collectors, etc. take up so many of the diagonal spaces on Chestnut between Tucker and 14th. That would be ideal public metered parking for, among others, my clients! (For insurance reasons, they are not allowed to park inside our in-building garage off Chestnut, and of course AT&T will send them away crankily).
Did you notice how, in Steve’s pic, the muddy path dead-ends right at Barb Geisman’s Jeep? How deliciously ironic.
They could landscape the area East of the muddy and then pave it. That would at least conceal somewhat the concrete from view while making the front more appealing.
I missed something here. Why did the city originally close the north entrance in the first place. If it’s supposed to be only temporary then it would be foolish (and costly) to put any kind of paved path where people have been walking. I agree with M. A little extra walking never hurt anyone. If it’s only temporary people need to stop being so lazy and just walk around! Ok, now I guess I will get bombarded with everyone telling me this is all permanent. Who’s gonna be forst?
Maybe they should tear down city hall and put a mall there instead. Then no one would use it.
I love the busy work of repaving the alleys. I called to ask why mine was being repaved when it only had 20 square feet that needed any attention. The streets dept guy who lives in my neighborhood said he resisted paving my cement alley but had received 5-7 complaints that it needed to be paved. 7 complaints! How about the other 60 houses who didn’t complain? Maybe they could have asked everyone else? Who’s going to call in to say their alley looks great, leave it alone? [Well, maybe some of us.]
This city really needs to change pretty soon. The parochial bullshit from Alderpersons and reckless public engineering by the bored affluent is going to keep this wonderful city paralyzed and dreaming of 1904.
Anti-spam word: “lacede” What is that? Missing an “L” maybe.