The civic heart of the city

MAYOR MENINO has unveiled an audacious plan to sell City Hall and City Hall Plaza to private developers and move municipal functions to the South Boston waterfront. But bold is not always synonymous with good, and before the city sells the property, it needs to make sure that the move would serve the people and enhance the vitality of downtown Boston.

The widely disliked City Hall, with its hulking concrete design, is exceeded in unpopularity only by the desolate plaza. But the building is accessible to most everyone in the city because of its location on top of the MBTA Green and Blue lines, a block from the Orange Line, and a short walk from the Red Line. Residents can get a birth certificate or pay a parking fine without having to get in their cars. City business, in the center of downtown Boston, blends with other government activity, legal work, financial services, and retail shops, hotels, and restaurants to create the critical mass necessary for strong urban life.

The mayor's alternative location, now the Bank of America Pavilion site, is served only by buses of the Silver Line. The South Boston waterfront is growing fast, but at this far end it would not match the density of downtown Boston. City workers would miss the bustle of downtown, and people with business there would most likely use their cars rather than brave the Silver Line, which would be hard-pressed to meet the additional demand.

In a telephone interview yesterday, the mayor was confident that fewer people will need to go to City Hall as more city business goes online. It's already possible to pay parking tickets that way. And Susan Elsbree of the Boston Redevelopment Authority foresees a water taxi service to make the location more accessible from East Boston and the downtown waterfront.

Still, relocating City Hall leaves open the question of what to do with the 9 acres that would become available for development. "The demand for downtown development is stronger than it has ever been," the mayor said in his speech before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce yesterday. But who's to know whether that will be the case in the four years he later estimated would be required to make the move? Underground transit lines could complicate construction, as could an advisory opinion by the attorney general in 1997 that the plaza, being open space, cannot be developed without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. The security needs of the JFK federal building on the plaza would have to be addressed as well.

The BRA is the city overseer of major development, but as an adjunct of the Menino administration, one of the developers, it is not in a position to provide detached assessment of the public interest. What's required is a committee of distinguished Bostonians to take a look at the plan. City Hall and its plaza, for all their flaws, have been an integral element in the revival of downtown Boston since they opened in 1969. It would be unwise to bring in the wreckers without a thorough, impartial review.