A $3.5 million design plan assembled by Springfield officials and Boston-based The Cecil Group, to light up Main Street from the train trestle near Lyman Street southward to Union Street, will go before the Finance Control Board on Monday morning, and then before the Springfield City Council that evening for approval. In the weeks-long approval process this fall, officials have provided some before-and-after imagery to convey how the streetscape along Main Street would be transformed.
In an article early this week, the Republican‘s Mike Plaisance reported on the plan going before the Springfield Redevelopment Authority for approval (it passed, 4-0). The plan includes not just improved lighting for the downtown stretch, but also resurfacing, landscaping and furniture, and adds touches like a few new trees in key spots, repainted crosswalks, traffic signal arms to match traditional streetlight standards, and some new and improved drainage grates.
Such improvements can’t make people come downtown in droves, but they can at least prepare the way. According to the project’s plans, each corner along Main Street will receive a similar facelift, adding to the sense of the area as a corridor, something recommended by the Urban Land Institute when its panel gave a preliminary report in September.
The project also connects significantly with the city’s efforts to redevelop 31 Elm Street, a former hotel with office space above and retail space below. Ideas about what to do with the building vary; a recent hotel market study (PDF) yielded lukewarm results. From Plaisance’s article:
A key to the renewal is to provide "the best front door possible" leading to the closed Court Square Hotel, said David B. Panagore, chief development officer for the Springfield Finance Control Board. The goal is either to redevelop the 114-year-old building into a hotel again or perhaps as condominiums, and $1.3 million of the project will go to Court Square and preservation of the hotel’s facade.
When the city seeks developers for the project in the summer, a request for proposals given to bidders will include a market study that will have been done by then about housing needs downtown. That study is expected to tell officials whether the best use for the building is still as a hotel or some form of housing, Panagore said.
Panagore reminds us, however, that as exciting as the whole project may be, it will still take a while. More from the article:
Funding for the project consists of more than $2.4 million in previously bonded money and $1 million from a state Community Development Action grant. The earliest the project would begin, with the remaining city and state approvals needed, land acquisitions and time to solicit bids, is 2008. The work will take a year, Panagore said.
Panagore said that even if the approval process goes smoothly up through the end of the year, by January 1 officials will simply have authorization to expend funds in pursuit of the plan. Plan implementation itself, including acquisition and relocation, will begin at that point.
"Based on my experience," Panagore said, "we could get all this done within four months, but things go slower than you expect. You run into things you didn’t anticipate. You’d like everybody to get along and for everything to happen right the first time, but if it doesn’t, you need to go slower and be respectful."
Of specific concern is a law office planning to relocate so officials can move forward on development plans. Panagore said, "The people you relocate are citizens and businesses, just like everybody else. You need to be just as concerned about them staying in business as you are about the business you’re bringing in. That generally means it takes more time than you expected."
If The Cecil Group’s plans are anything close to the results we might really see sometime by 2009, it will be worth the wait. The people walking around in the "after" pictures are another matter entirely.
To see all the images of the plans, see the sidebar gallery. For a larger version of the aerial or plan view of the design, drop me an email and I’ll send it to you, since the gallery condenses images to 400 pixels wide.
