We’re all used to our old New England buildings being retrofitted for awkward purposes and construction that doesn’t keep up with the times. There’s a special kind of pain in seeing projects go up thoughtlessly with flaws that will confront people for years or decades.
Two relatively recent private-sector construction projects near my home:
The Star Market in Porter Square renovated and reopened in August 2024, looking like it was wearing Whole Foods hand-me-downs to distract from worsening service, losing workers (it had already lost hours; it was once an all-day store) and putting more of its essentials – baby food, name-brand laundry detergent, shaving cream – into locked cabinets.
Star won’t say what its renovations cost, but part of it was redoing its entire deli area, where rotisserie chickens cook and fried chicken is sold, sandwich meats are sliced and pasta salads scooped into ready-to-go containers.
At any given time there are a handful of workers behind the counter, which runs nearly the length of the store front to back. The tenders of the chicken tenders don’t slice meat, though, and the meat slicers won’t sell you chicken, so the number of workers behind the counter is deceptive: You need your specialist.
Once upon a time, deli counters dispensed numbered tickets and workers would call that number to bring forward and serve the holder. Not only does this deli counter lack a ticket dispenser, it lacks a bell. There’s no way to get workers’ attention, and managers say Albertsons, the store’s parent company, won’t allow one.
What the counter does have, you’ll notice while waiting for help, is a bunch of workstations that have all been installed facing away from the counter. Workers look at a wall, not the customers. Fewer workers with no line of sight to the people they’re there to serve? A no-bell prize winner of a design solution.
Later in 2024, two restaurants moved from deep within Lesley’s University Hall to a corner space with an entrance on Massachusetts Avenue.
This action had a real back-and-forth: At one time the entire cluster of eateries in a central food court were told they’d move into the corner space, a plan called off in 2023 and brought back for only Yume Ga Arukara and Izakaya Ittoku. “This new space will give these businesses more visibility,” Lesley University president Janet Steinmayer said.
Yet when the move was made, only Izakaya Ittoku had access from the street. Yume Ga Arukara is in the shared space – you can see it from Izakaya Ittoku and it even has the more prominent street sign. This is presumably meant to be helpful but is, in practice, confusing.
Customers aren’t allowed to enter Izakaya Ittoku from the street and cross within to Yume Ga Arukara. (Or vice versa.)
To go to Yume Ga Arukara, which is the most prominent sign at the entrance to a restaurant that is not Yume Ga Arukara, they must walk inside University Hall.
The design solution? A seemingly permanent chalkboard sign on a chair in a vestibule. “If you’re looking for Yume udon restaurant, take a right here,” it says, with an arrow. “Use the entrance of the main building. Thanks!”
Let’s also take a moment to consider the many double doors in our communities and why one of the two doors always seems to be locked. How are we supposed to know this, or know which to use? More basically, why lock one of two?
Having more than one of something is supposed to make life easier, not a guessing game. If one of two doors is locked to conserve heat or air conditioning – an answer given at times – this represents as much of an architectural failure as workstations designed to face away from customers or a restaurant space built to be shared, then declared not to be.
It’s embarrassing to design and build something from scratch to create a permanent problem “solved” by hanging a sign on it. Or at least it should be.
Reach out via mlevy@csindie.com.
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