{"id":43924,"date":"2019-04-05T11:51:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T18:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/?p=43924"},"modified":"2019-04-05T11:51:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T18:51:08","slug":"an-open-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/an-open-forum\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"

History has a funny way of repeating itself. In 1918, our building opened its doors to the public…sort of. You see, the church completed construction on the downstairs level several years before the iconic domed space (which would become our Great Hall) could be finished. The community didn\u2019t let the partial building stop them from congregating, and they came together amidst the construction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist (now, Town Hall), 1923. (via the original Town Crier<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

A century later, we find ourselves in a similar position\u2014although thankfully our wait will only be a month as opposed to years. After 18 months of renovation, the Forum at Town Hall (formerly the Downstairs space) is opening a little ahead of schedule. <\/b>We\u2019ve received a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (or TCO) for the lower level. The room is still in its rawest form\u2014the furniture isn\u2019t all in and the bells and whistles like caf\u00e9 and bar service will come later, but the space <\/i>is there, and we can all feel it calling for conversations and community. Simply put: we\u2019re not going to wait for the lobby level and Great Hall to finish before we start hosting programs in the new Forum.<\/p>\n

In order to test the venue\u2019s capabilities\u2014and to help Town Hall feel like home again\u2014we\u2019re moving several of our April events back into our building. A few additional moved events will be announced over the coming week, but if you\u2019re interested in getting a preview of this incredible space, or just returning to Town Hall, be sure to <\/b>pick up a ticket to Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong’o (4\/12)<\/a> or Cherr\u00ede Moraga (4\/24)<\/a> and keep an eye on our calendar for other events back in the space!<\/b><\/p>\n

It should be emphasized: the rest of the building is still under construction. This means we\u2019re waiting to install some final features of the Forum, and that there are plenty of areas of the building that will still be closed off to the public until our renovation is completed in late May. We hope you\u2019ll share our enthusiasm as the building reopens a little at a time, and that our ability to be together again in Town Hall will supercede the temporary walls blocking off the almost (but not quite!) finished lobby level and Great Hall!<\/p>\n

Of course, more than just Town Hall is under construction\u2014our full block is in the midst of being developed. While the plaza and Ovation towers are being built<\/a>, the Forum is accessible via our new at-grade West Entrance, reachable from the loading zone on Seneca street.<\/b><\/p>\n

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We hope to see you at one of these first events back in the Forum, and that you\u2019ll join us again when the full building reopens in late May for our soft launch this summer!<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A century later, we find ourselves in a similar position\u2014although thankfully our wait will only be a month as opposed to years. After 18 months of renovation, the Forum at Town Hall (formerly the Downstairs space) is opening a little ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-town-crier"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}