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LINCOLN — The pavement is cracking and the steps are crumbling along Centennial Mall, the once-sparkling seven-block promenade linking the Nebraska State Capitol with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus.
Unraked leaves pile up in the corners of the stairways. Cracked planter boxes and tree stumps are evidence of the red oaks that once lined the mall. The trees outgrew their planting sites, and many died.
Five of the six original fountains also are dead. The City of Lincoln declared them a hazard more than a decade ago and filled in their leaky pools with dirt and sod. They're now the grassy areas where Occupy Lincoln protesters have pitched their tents.
"Honestly, an embarrassment," is how Jeff Searcey, a real-estate agent who heads the Nebraska Capitol Environs Commission, describes the deteriorated state of the mall in a video detailing efforts to spruce up the aging feature.
After two years, a volunteer campaign committee — with five former governors serving as volunteer chairmen — now is entering the final stages of a campaign to raise $9.6 million to renovate the mall. The fundraising includes a $1.5 million endowment to pay for future maintenance.
With more than $7 million now pledged by the City of Lincoln, the University of Nebraska Foundation, private donors and others, the Nebraska Legislature in its coming session will be asked to contribute $1.2 million to the project, said campaign coordinator Susan Larson Rodenburg of Lincoln.
On Statehood Day, March 1, the committee will launch a public campaign seeking additional contributions from all Nebraskans.
Work will begin as early as this summer on the center three blocks, which remain open to traffic and are scheduled for a city street resurfacing project.
Work on the pedestrian walkway portions of the mall — two blocks approaching the University of Nebraska on the north and two blocks approaching the Capitol on the south — could begin in 2013, if fundraising goes as planned. The hope is to have the renovation completed before the state's sesquicentennial in 2017.
Capitol architect Bertram Goodhue envisioned wide avenues or malls extending in each direction as part of his design for the building, which was completed in 1934. But it took 30 years before Centennial Mall was completed in 1967, commemorating Nebraska's 100th anniversary.
It remains the State Capitol's grand entrance.
Centennial Mall's design, by local architect Larry Enerson of Lincoln's Clark Enerson architectural firm, was "absolutely classic for that era," said Lynn Johnson, city parks and recreation director. The mall featured zigzagging stairways, pebblestone plazas and fountains in shallow, square reflecting pools.
Back then, it was a bragging point for Lincoln residents, recalled Roger Larson, a civic leader and retired radio broadcaster and banker.
"It was beautiful — it was an outstanding mall," he said. When he wooed on-air talent and advertising executives for his radio stations in the 1970s, he'd often drive them past the mall on the way to dinner.
The stylish mall, with its lighted fountains, helped to dispel Lincoln's backwater image for out-of-town recruits, he said.
But as the years passed, the mall proved increasingly difficult to maintain. Johnson, whose department is responsible for the mall, said the pebbled walks were difficult to keep clear of winter snow and ice without using salt and chemicals, contributing to the cracking problems.
Nebraska winters also were tough on the fountains. Finally, city officials gave up on all but the fountain closest to the Capitol — the one that appears in postcard photographs of the building.
"We'll go to heroic measures to keep that fountain functional," Johnson said.
Attempts to spruce up the mall began nearly 15 years ago, when the city and state jointly commissioned a master plan by the same national firm that designed the Summer Olympics facilities in Atlanta. That proposal would have closed all seven blocks between the Capitol and UNL campus to vehicles.
But its $20 million price tag proved insurmountable.
The current master plan, a joint effort of Clark Enersen Partners, Bahr Vermeer & Haecker, and Tom Laging and Associates architects and Olsson Associates engineers, will cost $7.5 million to build. Another $600,000 — grants from the Nebraska Environmental Trust and the Nebraska State Energy Program — will be used to make the new mall environmentally sustainable, including "silva cells," which are plastic structures installed underground to improve drainage and give the roots of large trees breathing room.
Recognizing that the mall often is the path schoolchildren travel on field trips to visit the Capitol and the Nebraska Historical Society Museum, designers are incorporating educational elements about the state, its geography and its people.
Numerous historical figures will be honored. In addition, donors will be able to honor their personal heroes and history through engraved plaques along the malls' walkways.
Other key features include:
» New basin-free fountains emerging from a replica of the state seal. To be located in the mall section closest to the Capitol.
» A plaza depicting a map of Nebraska and its topography. Each county seat will be marked, and a row of fountains will trace the path of the Missouri River. To be located adjacent to the State Office Building.
» A child-friendly "sprayground" of dancing fountains. To be located adjacent to the Lincoln Children's Museum, the Nebraska Historical Society Museum and UNL's College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9581, leslie.reed@owh.com
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