Talk:Portland City Hall (Oregon)

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Portland City Hall (Oregon) has been listed as one of the Art and architecture good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 28, 2008	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 17, 2008.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that a 1970 bomb caused US$170,000 worth of damage at City Hall in Portland, Oregon, but no one was ever arrested for the crime?

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This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Sarah Mirk (October 20, 2009). "Wikipedia-Derived Fact of the Day". The Portland Mercury.

A-class review

I have closely reviewed this article, and believe it's very close to "A" class. (To qualify as "A" class will require the approval two editor -- one besides me -- who are not substantial contributors, as spelled out here.)

I've made a number of small detail edits, and am listing below the issues that I'm not so sure about; these will require referring to the original sources, or are value judgments that should have more input, or simply someone with better knowledge of the WP:MOS than me. -Pete (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

review

First paragraph of "renovation" section is unclear on the distinction between, and motivation behind, the $16 million proposal and the $22 million proposal. Specifically, the earthquake compliance stuff at the end of the paragraph seems out of place; if this was truly behind the plan, it should be discussed in a little more detail, and not tacked onto the end. Also, it should be stated explicitly that the proposal was approved; there's a bit of a gap between proposal and preparation/execution.

From putting the info together, it came across that the budget wasn't really approved until after the project was complete, which I think is why there was a lot of uproar over the costs afterwards, especially taken in the light of the early cost estimates and the final total bill. The city said it was only about $1 million over budget at the most. I'll re-check the sources and see if I can find any "approval" and other info. The earthquake compliance is part of the "city code" compliance, I'll try to make that more explicit, and code compliance was the main motivating factor behind the entire project as it sounded like the city had cited itself for code violations. Restoration work seemed a secondary selling point that the architect was pushing for, but was not really used to sell the public on the project since it really added costs. It seemed to come out as, we need to fix the building before it collapses on the workers (oh by the way we want to restore the grandeur of the building, it will cost a lot, but don't worry about it). Aboutmovies (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization: I corrected some things I'm sure of, but left others I'm not. (For instance, "Mayor Terry Schrunk," but "Terry Schrunk, mayor of Portland" and "mayor's office.") I'm not so sure on whether city council or city hall should be capitalized as formal names/proper nouns?

I'm not entirely sure either, but Mayor Terry Schrunk for sure. I think city council/hall are capitalized if preceded by Portland or if the sentence is referring to the building/entity itself in a proper noun sense. E.g. using it for shorthand for Portland City Hall. Such as construction began on ~~Portland~~ City Hall on 4/4/1995, but we took the fight to city hall (the generic sense). Similar with mayor. I thought it was mayor's office since that is not the formal name, but after going to the city's website they seem to capitalize it and Office of the Mayor for all the city offices. Maybe Katr can chime in? Aboutmovies (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just saw this. I'll take a look, but generally you have it right--capitalize the full title, but lowercase for other uses. For the building, well, I thought Capitol should be capitalized (heh) throughout the Oregon State Capitol article but a subsequent copyeditor disagreed. I'll see what my style guides have to say. As for the mayor, I would tend to put that lowercase when not the full title despite many entities capitalizing things on their own websites. Hence universities tend to refer to themselves as "the University" in all instances. My take on this is that it is the application of "Capitals of Great Metaphorical Significance" and unnecessary and possibly pretentious. Katr67 (talk) 04:50, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done"Construction costs totaled $19.9 million on the $29.3 million renovation." From the following sentence, I see this means that some costs were considered non-construction, but it's not clear in this sentence. Should be rephrased for clarity.

I'll re-word it and try to find the source that breaks down what was not considered construction costs. Aboutmovies (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm doing a "quick fix" but if you come up with more detail that would be great. -Pete (talk) 17:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is good enough now. If we want to expand, here's what the Parente story says about cost overruns:

“

The price to lease 65,000 square feet of temporary office space was underestimated by one-third, costing $3 million instead of the originally budgeted $1 million.

Intense construction demand rendered early cost predictions meaningless. Despite three prebid construction estimates of $15.5 million, when all the subcontracting bids came in the total swelled to $18.8 million.

Unexpected costs emerged after the renovation had begun. Enormous concrete slabs had to be blasted out of the foundation. More toxic lead paint had to be removed than anticipated and added reinforcing steel was required.

”

Done"Of the construction amount, $17 million was needed for improvements to make the building comply with the city's building codes." Phrasing does not seem quite neutral enough.

It looks pretty neutral to me, what view do you think it is leaning towards? Keep in mind the city said the building did not meet its own code. Aboutmovies (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There was clearly controversy on whether the project and budget were worthy of approval. Building codes typically apply to new construction, I think, so I don't think there was a legal compulsion to do seismic upgrades or whatever. I don't think more than a very slight tweak is needed here, but the tweak is eluding me. -Pete (talk) 17:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the council chambers are inside the rotunda is mentioned several times; can this be simplified?

I'll try to work on that, though I think it should be mentioned in the history under the bombing, and in the details which is more of an overview of the building today. Aboutmovies (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to think of a solution too. The phrase "council chambers" occurs 6 times, and all those references say slight variations on the same thing; I think with an eye to organization, we can reduce that to 4 or 5. Though, since it's the most significant room in the building, maybe this isn't that big a deal after all. -Pete (talk) 17:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done In a citation: "New FWay City Hall is moving forward" -- surely a typo, should it just be "Way"?

Not a typo, its referring to Federal Way, Washington. I guess the Tacoma paper likes to use nicknames or they had a space issue for the headline. Aboutmovies (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll work on this over next few weeks (i.e. in May after finals), plus I still have a few things to work into the article from print sources. Aboutmovies (talk) 20:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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