Lessons from the East Wing

“Really?” was his response.

I explained that the East Wing was not an original part of the White House. That part of the site was occupied by the horse stables when Thomas Jefferson lived there. Later on, a greenhouse was built there. The first incarnation of the East Wing was built in 1902 during the Theodore Roosevelt administration. It was heavily modified in the 1940s and has been monkeyed around with many times since then. It was never a great example of any particular architectural style. Some historically important people passed through there, but they did their most important work in the residence or the West Wing.

I don’t know if we really need a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom attached to the White House. But what I find most interesting is the layout of the basement. It is well known that the old East Wing had a war room bunker in the basement. We’re not talking about a Silicon Valley “war room” here. We’re talking about a WAR room. The greatly expanded East Wing might also include a greatly expanded bunker in the basement but, if so, the details are probably all classified.

But the most important lesson learned doesn’t concern the architecture, it concerns the process. President Trump’s creation of the latest project by executive order was probably too hasty, too cozy and too unilateral. But the by-the-book process is definitely too bureaucratic, too slow, too political, too complex, and too expensive.

I managed a small construction project for the Smithsonian on the National Mall many years ago. The number of meetings, reports, hearings and filings was astonishing for a project that was just a restaurant where tourists visiting the museums could eat lunch. The paperwork process took many times longer than the actual design and construction work.

Much has been written about the costs of subway systems in Europe versus the United States. The last expansion of the Paris Metro cost roughly $200 million per mile. The Second Avenue Subway in New York City came in at roughly $4.3 billion per mile and the proposed extension of Caltrain to the Salesforce Transit Center could possibly hit $6 billion per mile, if it ever happens.

Americans sometimes think the French are all romantic dreamers who sit around drinking wine and writing poetry all day. However, people in the international construction industry know the French are actually brilliant engineers and highly skilled builders. Americans are also brilliant engineers and highly skilled builders. The differences are not in engineering or construction. They are in the legal system.

France has very good and very strict environmental laws and building codes. In their system, if a builder fully complies with those laws, they file their paperwork, they get their permits, they build the project and the people get to enjoy the use of the project quickly and economically. They also have strong construction unions that assure good pay and benefits for their skilled workers. In our system, the laws and regulations create innumerable possibilities for advocates to stall, delay, disrupt and complicate the project before it finally gets approved and built many, many years later. Most of the differences aren’t in the bricks, mortar, skilled labor or environmental rules. The differences are in the paperwork, meetings, revisions, hearings, time delays, legal fees and disruptions.

We shouldn’t build major projects by unilateral decree, regardless of who occupies the executive office. But we also shouldn’t allow worthwhile projects to be stalled for decades and grossly inflated in cost by a system that creates perverse incentives. For one example see CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. When this very well-intentioned law was enacted in 1970, the CEQA studies for many projects consisted of eight or nine pages addressing major environmental concerns. Now, they can run to many hundreds or even thousands of pages and are often mostly used to obstruct worthwhile projects. We need a system that retains reasonable safeguards while expediting the process, if we want to remain a world leader.

So, when you receive your next invitation to a shindig at the new East Wing Ballroom please just let us know if they let you peek in the basement.

Tom McCune is an architect and member of the Belmont City Council.