Glynn Archer School Is City Hall

The Mayor of Key West has prevailed and I am glad of that. Change is coming to White Street where the storied Glynn Archer School is now just a shell and will soon become the new and modern City Hall. The tiger has gone, leaving behind a fenced-in hole suitable for a Cheyenne inspection. Key West Diary: El Tigre.

It's been a hard fought battle with everyone who has an opinion in the city and outside it pitching in with advice. This week the Key West Citizen reporting on the budget called the planned new fifteen million dollar city hall "grand." The former city hall on Angela Street was already elderly when Hurricane Wilma dumped a shed load of water on a roof that was past it's sell-by date. The building didn't flood in that epic flooding event in the Keys but it got moldy from rain leaks. Some people wanted the offices rebuilt while others have argued, persuasively it seems, for a new fire station with a parking building and no city hall and that new fire station is scheduled cost between four and five million. Key West Diary: Glynn Archer City Hall

Then came talks with the school district which went well for the city as the school district is in financial disarray with a Board that couldn't organize a sock drawer and apparently has no clue how to balance it's financial books. They folded after some opposition to giving up the school and handed the keys over to the city. Mayor Cates fought off suggestions to keep city hall in it's current temporary location on Flagler Avenue and now it seems opposition is silent and city hall will go ahead. The end of the school year saw the end of Glynn Archer Middle School, named for a famed Keys educator who now only has 14th Street as a memorial - Glynn Archer Drive.

HOB is the middle school recently rebuilt and to such a height that neighbors got mad and the School Board, as usual, shrugged their collective shoulders and said sorry but that's the way it is, sorry for the monstrosity in oyur back yard. Horace O'Bryant students should do a lot better in the new building especially now that this school is gone. Horace O'Bryant Middle School - Index Why there was a note in Russian pinned to the door of Glynn Archer beats me!

House Of Brats as it is known affectionately around town, has been here for a long while and there was some sentiment expressed on the last day of school as the place closed for the last time. Saying goodbye to Glynn Archer school | KeysNews.com The thing is though the school was really worn out and now the shell can be preserved in all its Palladian glory while a thoroughly modern city hall goes up inside.

I like this location as its away from the tourist part of town and the school footprint is huge on this block so there will be lots of room for the employees and all the vehicles that end up crowding the city's nerve center. Access is great with White Street and United intersecting right here. Emergencies in Key West usually involve weather so that act that the National Weather Service is right across the street can only be a good thing.

That the police department is about four blocks away will be a good thing too I think, especially as I work at night when city hall is empty, but for administrators it's got to be a good thing to be working close to each other. And when you look at the building you know Mayor Cates was right:

But there are going to be problems. For instance, what happens to Dairy Queen? It's got to have been a blow to lose those middle schoolers and their appetite for soft serve. Tourists like to know where locals go to eat and they get mad when I say Outback and Miami Subs because they want to know we spend scads of cash eating out every night. Actually DQ is extremely popular, and you will see Conch cars with DQ stickers on the back. A Monroe County label on a car license plate is the state's way of identifying local residents, but locals born and bred here know better and stick those two innocuous letters in their vehicles... I don't but I'm not a Conch.

I'm looking forward to the new city hall.

 

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Glynn Archer City Hall

Key West City Hall at 525 Angela Street needs to be replaced and the debate about what to do is becoming as loud as the hurricane that put the kibosh on the old city hall in 2005. After Hurricane Wilma flooded much of downtown workers complained of mold and respiratory problems in the elderly building and finally the city rented temporary space on Flagler Avenue while the city churns up some turmoil about what to do next. One candidate is the Glynn Archer Middle School ( the original High School) on White Street.At first glance it looks like a magnificent structure to replace the rather dowdy angular 1960s cement structure crumbling on Angela Street. However if it were that simple the furor over the fate of the next city hall wouldn't be nearly as loud as it is. And everyone has an opinion about what to do next.First off someone needs to figure out what the School Board wants to do with the building that is currently in use. That is a problem not least because Board members are in an election cycle to see who will be voting on any changes after the November election. And owing to the School District's lack of funds it doesn't seem a like a donation of the school to the city will be forthcoming.In the same way that Mayor McPherson had a bee in his bonnet about building a water park on the Truman Waterfront, Mayor Cates, his chosen successor now has a bee in his bonnet about Glynn Archer for City Hall. This despite a report in the paper that the city has already paid a cool $750,000 for architectural plans on how best to rebuild city hall and Fire Station Number Two at the Angela Street location. Oops.Including all the rebuilding plus adding a parking garage the rebuild at Angela Street is estimated to cost 18 million dollars. The mayor wants to give the school district one and a half acres of land next to the District's Administrative headquarters on Trumbo Road and spend another 25 million dollars to refurbish Glynn Archer and build the parking garage and fire station on Angela Street. Those numbers summarized in Sunday's paper will be enough to get city hall watch dogs a heart attack on their own. Never mind all the numbers so far, now the mayor is trying to hire another architect to give him numbers that look better for the Glynn Archer project. There's another storm brewing over that.

Getting mad at Mayor Cates for trying to make his circle a square isn't that out of line in a nation where belief trumps facts every single day, in politics, business and social relations. If Florida were sensible gays would be allowed to adopt and teach classes because we all know that children don't grow up gay because of who their parents are (where would gays come from in the first place if that were the case? Not their genes, of course!). Yet Florida, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary forbids both activities to gays on the grounds that children need to be "protected." Which I mention only as a way of saying that yielding to the numbers is not the political way in Key West, Florida, or the USA as a whole, so let's not crucify Mayor Cates for trying to squeeze the numbers into his vision.

The Citizen thinks that locating city hall at Glynn Archer would cause traffic congestion. Which is a decidedly odd argument to make if you ask me (and no one has). The paper thinks it's time to conduct a traffic pattern study but give me the dollars and I can summarize it here. Everyone should visit city hall on two wheels, motorized or not. Look, there's tons of parking!All joking aside, Glynn Archer has tons of parking available on the school grounds that stretch alongside United Street which is a major artery out of the south end of Duval Street.

White Street is the major cross town artery giving easy access to Glynn Archer from Porter Place to the White Street pier. New Town residents approach from Truman, Catherine, White, Flagler and even Atlantic Avenue. Easy Peasy. Naturally there will be neighborhood impacts but a decent sized parking lot will keep street parking to a minimum. If traffic were the only problem, Glynn Archer would a be a shoe-in.Dealing with the neurotics on the school board will be ghastly. They lost the chance to sell Harris School for ten million during the property boom thanks to a lot of stupid dithering and ended up selling it for half that years later. They will have no idea how to cope if the City approaches them to do a deal. That alone will sink this idea faster than the Titanic. And deeper. This is after all a functioning school and a barely functioning Board.

Personally I think the two best things about Glynn Archer are the location, which centralizes city hall and puts it close to the national Weather Service (handy in a hurricane, just across the street) and a few blocks from the Police Station and central Fire Station (ditto in a hurricane or other emergency). Also it cannot be denied it looks the part.

Even as a ratty old school it has heft and presence on the street.

No amount of cheap signage can disfigure it.

However as the paper puts it, spending less to rebuild city hall at Angela Street is a powerful argument in an economic Depression. Naturally the owner of the hotel across the street on Angela will start creating again, as she did the last time that idea was proposed. She says her business will go bankrupt if she has to rent rooms with construction work going on across the street.

I'm with Mayor Cates, this place would be really cool if renovated properly and built to last a hundred years.

There's United Street, wide and straight pointing straight at Duval and the parking lot stretches out of sight behind the ugly chain link fence.

I think the tiger should stay too.

But it will never happen. That's my bet. It just looks too good.

El Tigre

The tiger on White Street is a landmark. It growls at traffic passing in front of Glynn Archer School.William Blake had it right:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

I first really noticed the tiger when I got a call at work and the agitated Spanish speaker told me she was at the tiger. The tiger? Oh the tiger. Got it. What you see below would be a Labrador.Across the street from the school is the National Weather Service office. This is where they track weather and hurricanes and log statistics.They're following Tropical Depression Four shortly to become Colin before it ravages Charleston or Miami or somewhere other than here (we hope). You can walk by at night and look through the windows from the sidewalk and see huge computer screens swirling and brightly colored.I thought the bird might be a sparrow. Or possibly not. It distracted me from the object of my picture, Glynn Archer School.
The dog statue in front the building is by a local artist called Rick Worth. He is a rather cool counter culture artist of the old school and calls himself a community artist. The dog faces off against the tiger across the street which has been snarling in that spot since 1986. Artist George Carey I am told oversaw the welding of the tiger at Key West High School and it was put in place as the mascot of Glynn Archer School.
There is another statue backing up the National Weather Service dog, a left over from a Sculpture Key West exhibition according to the label:This Harley is parked across the street often enough that it looks like a rather fine statue in it's own right.You wouldn't think this commercial street would have so much public art on offer.

This sort of sign makes me wonder if there is a drug filled zone somewhere nearby. I have never thought lawmakers were the best judges of unintended consequences. Keeping schools drug free seems fairly basic to me, but...there's the sign if there were any doubt. This is not a rooster free zone, however.
Someone had lost a barrette and though it was pink and would have matched my crocs, I refrained from stealing it. I set a good example for the little dears. Did I mention this isn't a chicken free zone?
Up close this is in fact a welded tiger. That it is getting on for thirty years old I find it more remarkable then ever.Across the street is this delightfully old fashioned sign. I didn't know that TVs could be repaired anymore. Use and toss seems to be the way these days. I include this picture to wig out the "all the gear all the time" witterers. The obligatory Labrador resting in the heat picture. It was a hot afternoon on White Street.

It must be vexing to spend all day staring at the Dairy Queen and never be able to step off the pedestal.I prefer to pay for my newspaper. I think it's more dignified.

A con leche while waiting for your laundry is a fine way to spend a Key West afternoon.

There has been noise about the city commission moving city hall to Glynn Archer which doesn't seem a like a totally bad idea. I just wonder what would happen to the tiger if that ever did happen.

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PS. I originally prepared this essay before I left town on my 8,200 mile road trip to California. This past Sunday, by strange coincidence, Solares Hill carried a story on George Carey, who moved away decades ago, mentioning he is "gravely ill with cancer," but as the paper notes we will have his fine public art around town to enjoy.