New hub sits where old hub was
New and old buildings can look good together — for reasons I can’t explain.
I took this photo standing inside the new transit center at the southwest corner of Second and Salem streets. It’s sleek, stark and shiny, but I like the way its solar-paneled roofline frames Madison Bear Garden.
The transit center could have been designed to be quaint to make it fit its surroundings. But that would have been too predictable. This 21st century look dropped into a much older cityscape is refreshing.
I suppose I would have felt differently if a four-story structure in the style of the transit center had been put up.
So here, at last, is the successor to Hotel Oaks, which stood at this corner for almost 50 years, followed by 40 years as a parking lot. The hotel was a hub of Chico. Now, in a different way, the transit center also serves as a hub.
I would have preferred that the hotel were still standing. But it was our tastes that doomed it. We stopped patronizing downtown hotels in smaller cities that don’t cater to tourists. All eyes are on the recently-restored Hotel Diamond to see if it signals a resurgence in travelers’ preference for hotels over motels or bed and breakfasts when they come looking for a place to sleep in Chico.
Comments
I've been using the bus system for more than 20 years and have been riding it at least once a day for approximately 10 years. I'm afraid after waiting, I believe it was at least a year, for the transit center to be completed, I was disappointed. Don't ask me exactly what I expected, but I guess it was a transit center and essentially what the bus riders got was a new sidewalk to stand on---and a male/female restroom one would use only as a last resort---and you really can't say the restroom is for the bus riders as the general public can also walk in if it isn't in use. I think a line-up of kiosks or even one long kiosk would have been preferable.
You call the new transit center "sleek, stark and shiny." It is stark but since when are concrete blocks (cinder blocks?), "sleek and shiny?" And of what benefit is it to those who use the bus? Did you try sitting on the approximately 6" in diameter round metal seats attached to the poles?
Is the "solar-paneled roofline" for looks? Is it really worth the money or worth bragging about to have a solar-paneled roof out in the open when there are no walls? When the cold wind and rain can blow in underneath from all four sides in the winter and there is nothing to keep the heat out in summertime? What purpose does the mesh metal fence or panel serve and why the "wave" pattern? It looks like something you might see on sand dunes pointing the way or keeping visitors on a path to the beach.
It's also hard to appreciate the (purposely ugly?) restroom to be shared by both genders. I think the prototype for that must have come from our prison system.
I'm glad someone likes it
---but how often do you have to look at it or how often do you spend time there waiting for the bus?
The only thing I can really find appealing about the transit center is the fact that a very convenient and pleasant 'Augie's' is on the same block with windows that face the bus area so one can comfortably wait for the buses from that vantage point.
Posted by: Ruth Ruhl-LaMusga | June 30, 2008 11:19 PM