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City Hall Plaza begins to fulfill ultimate destiny as a parking lot

Parking lot

Privileged City Hall workers and contractors have, of course, been parking on City Hall Plaza for years, but the city's finally made the practice official by installing a guard booth and a permanent, if somewhat flimsy, gate by the T stop (Ed. note: See comments, which note the booth and gate have been there longer than an apparently unobservant reporter had thought).

This morning, the guard seemed to be spending most of his time rushing out of the booth to shoo away people trying to park in front of the three electric-car recharging stations on Cambridge Street to keep them clear for all those electric vehicles in Boston that need recharging. Even a Prius did not escape his glare and request to move.

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Comments

Can anybody park there after say, 8pm? Or are they reserved for both of the city's electric cars 24 hours a day?

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. . . As the lines of sight for the machine gun nests in the giant pill box that passes for city hall are kept open I don't see a problem with it. Boston city hall- Stalin's favorite building in the united states.

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Right up there with the Toyota Camry that's been parking, backed up to the elevator in the Kenmore Sq. bus stop. What's with these city officials parking all over our plazas and pedestrian thoroughfares? If there's a parking shortage or problem - fix it. Clearly if the city employees are having to work around a shortage in parking - so are all of us.

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That booth has been there for a while AFAIK... It was definitely there by the time spring came around...

And the gate? Even longer. The gate is pretty old and I can't recall there not being a gate in the past 2-3 years.

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http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=boston&ie=UTF8...

I'm guessing this image from at least last year. Could be a couple years.

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It's amazing the stuff I miss!

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and have noticed this creeping fortress mentality over the past couple of years.
It reminds me of the crap that people put out to save street spots after the snow.
If they are going to do it, do it right like they did at the State House instead of this sloppy mess.

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I've seen it used primarily to make sure that any mass movement of stuff onto the plaza is supposed to be there - like when they held the Bike Friday events and Scooper Bowl and the Big Apple Circus and the like.

This makes some sense for both security reasons and party crashing reasons.

I do see vehicles parked over by my gym, but they invariably carry blue plates and City of Boston livery.

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And rarely see any cars other than municipal vehicles or contractors or event staff doing legitimate work there, so I'm not sure what privileged municipal workers you're talking about. What was once a pedestrian plaza at Pemberton Sq on the other hand seems to have morphed into a parking lot for court workers, complete with an always unmanned guard booth along the Somerset St entrance to the plaza.

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Let's see some useful buildings go up on that plaza. What a humongous waste of space. Plus it will hide the Shitty Hall.

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If there is one undeniable physical manifestation of Menino's inability to get anything done beyond arranging community meetings to get input that never goes anywhere . . . it's City Hall Plaza. I did not see the booth or gate while the Big Apple Circus was there. I did see various vehicles that had something to do with the City on the plaza. It's ridiculous.

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They've actually made City Hall Plaza even uglier than it was already. Quite an accomplishment.

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