This, it seems, is the last stop for the Wandering Bambino.
Backers of the proposed 9-foot bronze statue of former Mayor Frank L. Rizzo have accepted a site in front of the Municipal Services Building, and the location got preliminary approval from the Art Commission yesterday.
"I'm happy," Frank Rizzo Jr. said yesterday. "The MSB site was my first choice, and it makes a lot of sense."
The move toward the MSB represents an accommodation to political realities by Rizzo and other statue-backers.
They had hoped to get a more prominent site on JFK Plaza, which had gotten earlier approval from the Art Commission, but Rizzo said it was clear that the site would never get past the Fairmount Park Commission.
"From what I understand, they were just never going to reconsider that site, and I never wanted this to become a big fight," Rizzo said.
Members of the Rizzo Memorial committee can now set about raising the additional $120,000 they say is needed to meet the project's $200,000 price tag. And Abington sculptor Zenos Frudakis can begin designing the piece.
Ironically, the MSB site means the statue will be near the Jacques Lipchitz's sculpture, "Government for the People," whose installation Mayor Rizzo had battled in the mid-1970s, complaining that it looked "like a plasterer dropped a load of plaster."
Thora Jacobson, head of the Art Commission, said the proximity of a big bronze Rizzo to the Lipchitz piece was an issue, but one that she says has been resolved.
"In the long run, I kind of think Frank Rizzo came to an accommodation with the Lipchitz piece," Jacobson said, "and I think he's a big enough guy to stand up to it."
Although the Art Commission has agreed to approve the MSB site, the Rizzo Memorial committee must come back with the design of the piece, its precise location on the plaza, and the method of installation.
Jacobson said it "remains to be seen" whether sculptor Frudakis can design a piece that will pass muster with the Art Commission, but she noted that "his past work indicates that he is a highly credentialed figurative sculptor."
Frudakis had complained when he visited the MSB site in August that it fronts one of the busiest SEPTA bus stops in the city.
"It's as if he's being pushed to the side," Frudakis said of the location. But Rizzo said yesterday that the site "had grown on" Frudakis.
The Rizzo statue, assuming funds are raised and it is completed, will join other public art planned for the MSB, which is to reopen gradually beginning later this month as renovations are completed.
The other works are oversized game pieces, such as checkers, to match the checkered pattern in the wide MSB plaza.
Rizzo said he hopes having his dad's statue in front of the building will help get it renamed as the Frank L. Rizzo Municipal Services Building.
