Salem's Civic Center needs renovating, not replacing

There's more and more talk floating around about doing away with the Salem City Hall and Library, even though the buildings are only 44 years old. 

Geez. Our house was built at almost exactly the same time. My wife and I have steadily maintained and improved it since we bought our home in 1990. It's still highly livable, and worth much more than we paid for it.

In Europe, buildings hundreds of years old are still in use.

So why is it that I keep hearing rumors that City officials want to trash Salem's not-very-old City Hall and Library -- selling the downtown property for commercial use and somehow transferring Civic Center functions elsewhere?

A recent Statesman Journal editorial about the proposed new police facility adds fuel to those rumors:

In contrast, the city of Salem has not done that same thorough examination and long-term planning for the rest of the Vern Miller Civic Center and the library.

The 1970s civic center is uninviting and confusingly designed. Should Salem have a smaller city hall, with drive-thru convenience, and make better use of online portals and video interaction for serving residents and businesses? Likewise, how would a 21st century library be best designed to serve the community?

Salem needs to find those answers before deciding what to do with the current city hall and library.

Well, SJ editorial page editor Dick Hughes must have forgotten that just a few years ago, there was just such a "thorough examination" of the Civic Center. 

In 2010 a University of Oregon Sustainable Cities Initiative did extensive planning for a Civic Center renovation.  A few years later, City officials brought forth a proposal to build a new 75,000 square foot police facility just north of City Hall, and also extensively renovate/seismically retrofit the Civic Center.

Ignore the rectangular three story building on the right side of this image. That's the police facility. Community opposition led to a plan to build it on the Civic Center campus being dropped. 

But look at how much more inviting City Hall looks.

The atrium is removed and landscaping is added, making City Hall look much more inviting. A new City Council chambers is at the top left of the image (both the current atrium and City Council chambers would be prohibitively expensive to seismically retrofit).

This image shows a more schematic view of the Civic Center renovation. Again, ignore the police facility building at top right. Otherwise, there's a lot to like about the plan. At the very least, it's a great start toward a safer, more attractive, and more efficient Civic Center -- by renovating the existing buildings, not replacing them.

This is part of background information about prior police facility planning that was provided in October 2014 to the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Police Facility. 

As you can see, it says that in 2011, a City Council subcommittee concluded that "seismic strengthening of the existing Civic Center facilities extends the life of the buildings for 40 to 50 years, completes more than $17 million of the $22 million in deferred maintenance projects at the Civic Center, helps to create more convenient public parking and public access to the property and a more active, welcoming setting while retaining and enhancing other important elements and natural features of the campus."

This isn't ancient history. It is just five years ago. 

So why is there talk now, as in the Statesman Journal editorial, of starting over on discussions of how to maintain the Civic Center?

Why ignore a lot of work that points to a way of making the Civic Center buildings earthquake-safe, extending the life of the buildings for 40 to 50 years, and taking care of the bulk of deferred maintenance on the buildings, all for about $20 million?

(City staff say the current cost of seismically retrofitting City Hall and the Library is $26.7 million.)

"Fix it" just makes hugely more sense than "tear it down and start over." This was the advice an expert urban planner, Chuck Marohn, offered to Salem when he spoke recently at the Library auditorium.  Here's what I said in Five "Strong Town" things Salem is doing wrong.

"We are fools if we build more," Marohn, who toured Salem yesterday morning, said. He made similar negative comments about the $500 million proposed Third Bridge several times during his talk.

As noted above, his main theme was that cities can't afford to build costly infrastructure that costs way MORE money to maintain over coming decades. "How much does your tax base have to go up to pay for this project?" he asked...He offered up the analogy of someone wanting to build an addition to their house, but not first fixing the leaky roof.

Yet now City officials are pushing Measure 24-399, an $82 million police facility bond measure that no longer includes any money for seismic retrofitting of City Hall and the Library, which as shown above would go a long way toward taking care of the massive amount of deferred maintenance on these valuable buildings.

This is a big reason why I'm urging a NO vote on Measure 24-399.

Salem's Police Department does need a new police facility.

But in 2013, the plan of City officials was to build a much less expensive 75,000 square foot facility and make renovations to the Civic Center -- in the option shown above this would cost $56 million, which is $26 million less than the $82 million taxpayers are being asked to pay via Measure 24-399 for an oversized police facility alone.

Hopefully talk of doing away with City Hall and the Library is just that, talk.

It'd be a shame to trash buildings whose life span can be extended for 40-50 years by doing seismic retrofitting that also will save lives when the Big One Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake hits.

Comments

[Jim Scheppke]

The Library is really newer than City Hall. It got a pretty major expansion and makeover in 1990-91 and the parking garage was added then. Since then the Salem Public Library Foundation has periodically invested money to improve and maintain the facility. Most recently they spent quite a bit to renovate the Children's Department, adding more space for children's story programs. All that investment, with money donated by library supporters, would be wasted if the library was torn down. It's just a dumb idea — typical, I'm sorry to say, of the "Statesman Journal Editorial Board."