No, i don’t know how full these local government buildings are, but the mail-handling features of the post office (sorting, temporary storage, loading dock) may not fit easy into conventional office space. Is the local FBI office downtown, or out on Stadium Blvd?

The Plymouth and Birmingham spaces are both excellent centerpieces of their communities. Something like that would be the defining center of town. Among the various fatal flaws of A2D2 was the absence of vision regarding what it would take -such as green space – for a 10-story-taller downtown to remain viable for non-transient residents. For all the Sturm-Und-Drang of A2D2, it seems as if surprisingly little actual thought went into it.

To your point about the unsatisfying size of a Library Lane park, perhaps we should consider selling Liberty Square park to a developer, and reserving an additional portion of the top of the library garage equal to the sq ft of Liberty Square.

The remaining green portions of the diag are pleasant, but the diag is the center of the university, not the center of Ann Arbor, and it exists to serve students, not the civic community. Then there is the problem that as university property, the diag is not a public space. The university can, and does, ban individuals from its properties. Last I heard, over 3,000 people banned from all university property. A friend of one of my sons was banned for a year for using a skateboard there. As a student-oriented space, the diag isn’t necessarily family-friendly, and it certainly isn’t amenable to the sorts of events contemplated for the Library Lane park.

The old “Quality Bakery” lot (next to Palio) might make a nice pocket space like Liberty Square, but it doesn’t address the purposes of a Library Lane-type park.

@7 Mr. Askins

The rooftop garden at city hall seems like that should answer the bell for a place to address an assembled rabble. The space below the balcony (near the Blue Light Special) should hold more people that the Quality Bakery lot.

IDEA: As long as the DDA is contemplating a reconstruction of the elevator/stair tower on the southwest corner of the Fourth & William parking structure and mayor John Hieftje is floating the idea of a plaza to be established on the surface parking lot just to the west, maybe the plans could be revised to incorporate a balcony on the stair tower overlooking the plaza. From there, elected officials could make speeches to the throngs gathered on the plaza, release doves, etc.

I suppose this is true if one ignores that proximity of Downtown to the U-M campus and the Diag specifically. But unless the city is willing to make the effort to create a greenspace of significant size akin to Kellogg Park in downtown Plymouth or Shain Park in downtown Birmingham, I doubt there are many who are going to find much satisfaction with any configuration of the property around Library Lane. It’s simply too small to meet the ranges of wants that Vivienne outlined from the 1991 study.

I was impressed by the prescience and relevance of this paragraph from the Luckenbach 1991 study of the Library Lot, which I recently reread. (It is linked from the Library Lot page on my blog.)

“With the exception of a temporary county park at the corner of North Main and Ann Streets, Downtown is almost totally devoid of grass. There is no grass to sit on or to eat lunch; no grass for young children to play on; no grass to provide a welcome change of ground plane from the concrete, brick and asphalt of Downtown.There is no outdoor place to hold a civic ceremony or for elected officials to make a speech. There is no good place to hold a musical performance for an audience of more than a few. Ann Arbor has a remarkably rich urban and cultural life, but there are always opportunities for more.”