Adaptive Reuse at City Hall

 

If you have been an occasional visitor to Portland City Council meetings at City Hall, here’s a friendly tip:  Your next trip will NOT be déjà vu all over again.

 The dais where five city commissioners had ruled since 1913 – some of them giants of local lore – has been reconfigured so the new 12-member council can squeeze into half of a big circle that dominates the chamber.  City staffers and people who offer testimony sit on the front half.

In all, the big circle reduces the number of seats on the main floor, which forces other folks into the balcony, where sound levels are weak from speakers who don’t cuddle up to their microphones.

 Your correspondent spent several years attending council sessions, first in the 1970s when the council sat against the curved east wall, and later in the 1990s when a renovation backed the council against the flat west wall.  The new big circle backs up again to the east.

Offices inside the landmark 1895 City Hall have been substantially reshuffled.  Fortunately, many of the historic internal elements of marble floors, oaken woodwork and glorious stairways have been preserved.  It is one of the best buildings by Whidden & Lewis who comprised Portland's most prestigious architectural firm of the era.

The occasion of my visit was a January 16 hearing at which the council unanimously agreed to allow destruction of a 1908 bungalow at 118 SW Porter St. in the South Portland Historic District.  The outcome was a foregone conclusion, since the site will become part of a new home for Ukandu, a non-profit agency that provides counseling for childhood cancer patients and for their families.

 Ninety minutes of testimony from cancer patients and their families proved compelling to the City Council, same as it had for the Portland Landmarks Commission in an earlier hearing.  While the landmarks body generally tries to protect historic properties, it agreed that the public value of the proposed change was more significant than the historic value of the small residence that had been converted to offices 40 years ago.

 The case of the Porter Street bungalow was so easy, observers couldn’t come away with any real perspective about how this new City Council feels about historic preservation.  We shall learn more someday when a more important historic building comes under threat.

The hearing did allow a few observations.  The councilors listened carefully.  Good questions were asked.  If there are dummies aboard this vessel, it is not yet apparent.

Whether any of them become giants of this cramped new dais…time will tell.

----Fred Leeson

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