The question rises anew because of a recent decision by the Attorney General that any "disposal" of the Plaza requires the consent of two-thirds of the state legislature. A "disposal" includes, of course, the plan by the Trust for City Hall Plaza to sell off a portion of the plaza to a private hotel developer.

For several years the administration and the Boston Redevelopment Authority had insisted they had the unilateral authority — without even the consent of the City Council — to dispose of the plaza as they saw fit. This latest twist puts the kibosh on that theory. It also makes one wonder whether that consent can be achieved at all given the sharp dissension that already exists over the Trust's plans.

As those who have followed this saga know, the Trust was created three years ago by the Mayor to fix the clearly broken City Hall Plaza. The Trust — composed of representatives from significant Boston-based businesses — was told that public funding would not be available for the job. As a consequence, it somehow needed to make the Plaza pay for its own improvements.

This constraint quickly lead the Trust to conclude it had to build a hotel. The numbers seemed to work; no one doubted a hotel on the site would be successful. And the cash flow from such a venture would more than provide for improvements made to the rest of the Plaza.

To top that off, the Trust persuaded itself that the Plaza's problem was that it was too big. The hotel would shrink the plaza and that, members argued, was a good thing. What the plaza needed, they said, was sharp and vibrant edges, such as streets and stores. And what better edge than a hotel, with the potential to bring life to the place even during the evening?

The problem with this whole train of thought was that it ultimately required that a portion of a public park had to be destroyed in order to save the remainder. Many were unpersuaded that this was a necessity. They were unpersuaded that the only possible source of financing was self-generated. They were unpersuaded that the only way to make the barren space useful again was to shrink it by a third.

Indeed, the process itself heightened these suspicions. The BRA went out of its way to argue that the Plaza was not a public park, that it was simply part of the original 1960s urban renewal plan that wiped out Scollay Square and the residential West End. The Trust was limited in its membership to business representatives who paid $15,000 a year for the privilege; outsiders, including abutters, green space advocates and residential groups, were excluded. The public process that the Trust engaged in for two years seemed a sham, notable for the number of meetings that the Trust claimed were open to the public, not notable for any willingness to meaningfully consider different visions of the plaza. Indeed, the process ultimately became a political issue, with virtually every At-large city council candidate in the most recent city elections vowing publicly to oppose construction of a hotel.

So where does the Plaza go from here?

The Plaza is one of three great open spaces that surround Beacon Hill. The other two are the Common and the Esplanade. Residents of Beacon Hill are only too aware that there is a virtually insatiable demand for use of these spaces for large gatherings. The Esplanade, for example, is chock full of evening concerts throughout the summer. The Common is also subject to the same demands, demands it is unable to meet. Indeed, the Common Management Plan makes it clear that gatherings must be limited to 10,000 or fewer. These limits are what caused the ejection of MixFest from the Common this past fall.

Boston needs a large gathering place where concerts, festivals and the like could occur. The space needs to be centrally located yet away from residential neighborhoods. It needs to be accessible, able to tolerate abuse (unlike the fragile Common and Esplanade), and flexible in its configuration so it can handle everything from a MixFest to a Winter Wonderland to a political demonstration.

City Hall Plaza obviously fits the bill. The Trust didn't see it that way: it wanted it smaller and more like a European plaza, with tourists at the hotel sitting outside on cool summer evenings sipping espressos and marveling at the Brutalist architecture of City Hall.

We don't need that. We need a place that's a combination of Great Woods, the Hatch Shell and the parade grounds of the Common. We need a place of crowds, life and noise.