Springfield City Councilor Bud Williams held a public subcommittee meeting in the last week regarding planned changes to the State Street corridor at the intersection of Catharine Street and Wilbraham Road. Evidently the meeting stemmed from a July 16 City Council meeting where second and third passages of the State Street Interim Overlay District were anticipated to pass, but didn’t.
Williams expressed reservations related to the traffic pattern changes that have long been in the works, having gone through several rounds of public and business meetings, to say nothing of engineering and design work; the public meeting seemed to address not so much the proposed overlay district, but the sense that the surrounding neighborhoods around the significant nexus of the Mason Square area had not been invited into the decision-making process reaching far back in time. And if not the process, then at the very least the tangible challenge is that community members expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed traffic flow changes, which are set to be implemented shortly.
Coverage was offered by both Mike Plaisance’s report in today’s Republican as well as Matthew Campbell’s report for CBS3. The latter called the proposed traffic change a “blockage” of Wilbraham Road.
George O’Brien’s article in a recent issue of Business West addresses the corridor as well as the nascent quasi-private sector alliance that has formed, the State Street Alliance, which is giving birth to the State Street Corridor Redevelopment Project. O’Brien quoted local architect and business owner Kerry Dietz, of Dietz & Company, who has a leadership role in the alliance, as well as being chair of the city’s Planning Board and a member of the citizen advisory committee for its massive zoning revision project. From the article:
One of the problems State Street has faced over the years is that too many people have said “that will never work here” about too many different types of ventures, [Dietz] said, adding quickly that some outside perspective on the corridor is clearly needed.
“We in Springfield tend to suffer from a lack of imagination,” she told BusinessWest. “People say, ‘it’s always been like that, and it will always be like that.’”
After the first passage of the interim overlay district, the city’s chief development officer David Panagore told me, “[The overlay] provides a basis to see how [standards] work in a limited area, in a focused area, and to also work out the details. The process shouldn’t be one that’s more burdensome; it should be less.”
“It provides guidance to developers about what our expectations are,” he continued, “so that you know what would be approved. And then, the other piece of it is, and one of the city councilors raised it—they were supportive of this, but look at what we currently get for permits. The world we live in is one where used car dealerships do want to go onto State Street.”
And there’s nothing we can do about that, in other words? I asked.
“That is the economy we’re living in,” he replied. “There’s a recognition of that. That’s why the State Street Alliance is so important—being able to move in the direction of supporting economic development and underwriting. To be able to put the sort of retail uses here we want—like the [Urban Land Institute] said, you’re probably going to have to—to a small degree—fund some of these operations. You’re going to have to help them over the threshold. Once they get up and running, it’s that front-end capital cost. It’s why the state provides TIFs, it’s why the state provides economic development assistance; it’s why we’re working hard right now with the Donahue Institute to put in place a new economic development program for CDBGs.”
Panagore continued by saying that the city has to help any developer who comes into the process by walking through the necessary steps, acting as an engaged partner. Secondly, the city is in a position to provide sometimes necessary economic incentive, “because some of these deals are upside-down.”
“By coming up with a plan,” he said, “having the $13 million in road improvements from the federal and state [governments], having the State Street Alliance plan—these are all pieces of the pie that take a lot longer than you want to come together, but they do come together if you keep working them.” A big piece of that is helping seven surrounding neighborhood associations come together around a common goal, as Panagore put it, which has also has strong support and encouragement from Russell Denver, president of the Chambers of Commerce.
What happened leading up to the recent public meeting, making it appear as though these years of coalition-building work is unraveling? Were mistakes made in the planning process? Is some other motive coming into play by the various stakeholders? The meeting was well-attended: how many of those present were hearing of the planned traffic flow changes for the first time?
Concerns about the traffic flow may be warranted, but then again, they may not. Part of the public’s negative reaction to the proposed changes may simply be that old familiar, “That will never work here.”
