LITTLE ROCK — THE HEADLINE on the front page of Wednesday’s paper said it all, or at least summed it all up: “3 bridge designs fail to inspire unity,/ spur call to move project.”
Uninspired is the word, all right. For on Page 8A of the same paper were three possible designs for a new bridge to replace the old one on Broadway, which still links the two Little Rocks. It was hard to tell which of the proposed new designs were worst. Call it a three way tie for last place.
If those really are the only choices available, the poor viewer and citizen would be reduced to choosing not the best and most inspiring, but just the least offensive.
The longer this process of choosing a design for the new bridge goes on, the better the old bridge, completed in 1923, is looking. Its classic grace, its solid grounding, its understated ornamentation and low profile, the way it fits into the scene instead of interrupting it . . . all of that is missing in these new designs in a style that might be called Mediocre Moderne. It’s a style that immediately renders a real place-two lively cities bordering an ever-flowing,ever-changing river-into just another no-place. A hiatus instead of a locale.
Where is the sense of place in these designless designs? Nowhere. Are these bridges or just highway overpasses?
AT THE OUTSET of this search for the best design, when hope was still high and enthusiasm mounting, it seemed the only thing that stood in the way of building a great new bridge was a lack of imagination. It was to be a worthy successor to the old bridge, much praised in its progressive time for its beauty and utility. The new bridge would be not just a bridge but an inspiration. A symbol and summation of Arkansas’ forward-looking spirit, a landmark someone like Winthrop Rockefeller or Fay Jones could be proud of.
The new bridge could even be a cable-stayed beauty like the one crossing the Mississippi at Lake Village. Now there’s a sight. Why not give Arkansas’ twin cities something to match it-like the monumental Gateway Arch up at St. Louis or Boston’s great Zakim/Bunker Hill span? Why should we settle for anything less here in Arkansas? This state aimed too low for too long in its history. You don’t get a Thorncrown Chapel by settling for what some engineer/accountant says is possible considering all the constraints of time and money, and only the constraints. Not the possibilities. All these proposed designs could have a similar theme: Think Small.
Now is a time to turn our eyes skyward and build us a bridge, not just a “connecting link,” as the traffic engineers say with all the imagination of a numbers-cruncher. Looking at the three designs for the new bridge presented by the state’s highway department last week, you could almost smell the carbon monoxide, see the grime and boredom accumulating, feel the absent-mindedness of drivers crossing a structure they would never notice, for what’s to notice in any of these designs?
Instead of a vision, we the people got a high-pressure sales job worthy of your lower used-car salesman. (“You better make up your mind now ’cause this deal won’t be good once you step off the lot.”) We’re told the state has only so much money to spend, only a brief window in which to make use of the federal funds available for such a project, so we have to make up our minds now.
No, we don’t. The old bridge is still structurally sound; it just lacks capacity. They really built ’em in 1923. Unlike 2012, when we’re confronted by designs that are pedestrian in more than one way. The old bridge will still be there tomorrow, Lord willing, and the day and year after. There’s time to think about this thing-no matter what the bureaucrats/salesmen say.
The old bridge will be 90 next year; the new one should be built to last as long, serve as well, and have as enduring a style. The site can be moved, the old bridge retained for hikers and bikers, thought taken, and a real design competition held, not some limited search for less than best.
To put it simply: Don’t rush us, man. We’re not just Arkansans/ Arkansawyers/Arkies but Americans. We’ll make up our own minds, thank you. After all, we’re the ones paying for this thing. Or have the planners at the highway department forgotten that little detail? They act like it. It’s as if they lived in their own little bubble and we the people are just another impediment in the process to be got out of the way, like a mountaintop to be shorn off or a tricky land deal to be negotiated. Or a public hearing to be got through-to be got through after the essential decisions have been made by our betters. So we’re handed three mediocre, or less than mediocre, drawings and told to choose. Like a sucker asked to pick a card from a stacked deck.
It’s as if we the taxpayers were just little stick figures in one of those architectural drawings, happy and content to be put just where the planners want us. It’s time for those little figures to rear up, come to full-scale life, and say: Whoa! What’s your hurry, bub?
Are we really going to disrupt the lives, routines and routes of the hundreds of thousands of people pouring over the old bridge at the start and finish of the day, and at all hours in between, in order to build something as, yes, uninspired as any of these proposed bridges? Why not stop and think first?
The important thing isn’t just to make this decision but to make it right.
Editorial, Pages 10 on 02/13/2012