This is more then a just a vote on "affordable" housing this is also a vote on expanding our commercial tax base. Does anyone wonder why we can not get a major national chain to come downtown? One only has to look at the demographics. Now what do you think that does to our commercial base?
RKG said it best when they said "More emphasis should be placed on attracting a higher class of people, who in turn would improve the commercial vitality of the City, and allow the City to leverage more private investment to increase the amount of upper end products."
Seriously, this is when it be nice is we had a strong Chamber of Commerce that could actually weigh in on decisions like this.
WRRB/Telegram District City Council Forum 10/18
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This forum is for all district council candidates; all candidates are here
today. Format: 14 total questions, 4 questions across districts (for all
candida...
6 months ago
11 comments:
"Seriously, this is when it be nice is we had a strong Chamber of Commerce that could actually weigh in on decisions like this" - Bill Randell
how about just having some leaders with some F'n common sense...the mere thought of bookending downtown with no-lo income housing makes absolutely no sense what so ever
i AM SCRATCHING MY HEAD HERE. dOES THE SCHOOL DEPT. CARRY INSURANCE for vandalism?
Does the school dept engage in Self Insurance (no ins.)? I am not being critical of them if they do engage in some self ins. I just am curious.
and Vinny Pedone says on Polito this morning in talking about the situation ....and I paraphrase.....the YOUNG ADULTS or kids or whoever they are who attend school there....HUH...?? YOUNG ADULTS....I Thot that was an elementary school.........to grade 6??...............young adults in attendance???....MMMMM...............even I finally graduated from elemeentray school (Gr 6) by the time I was 14 .......Vinny needs to define young adult for us???
ANyone notice the prejudice in how Polito choses his guests............many seem to be from the east side [g].
I wouldn't shop downtown even if there were retailers down there. It's simply way easier to go to a surrounding area where parking is a plenty and there are a dozen retailers at one locations. Why go to a Target that opens downtown when I can go to Millbury or Lincoln plaza? I can park at those locations and hit numerous retailers at one time and have plenty of dining options. Unless in a major city, downtowns are dead. Well with the exception of North Hampton.
Anonymous @ 2:23pm just described what a downtown should be: "I can park at those locations and hit numerous retailers at one time and have plenty of dining options."
With ample available space for retail and one of the highest ratios of parking-to-daytime population in the Northeast, downtown Worcester should be in a position to capitalize.
Anonymous said...
"I wouldn't shop downtown even if there were retailers down there."
That is why downtown needs to develop market rate housing and retail options for the local population base. A downtown retailer regardless whether it is located in a major city or not; needs to market itself towards the city dweller not the occasional suburban shopper. They can have their non-descript malls and strip plazas.
And while I’m on my diatribes, back when the downtown galleria was remade into the Worcester Common Fashion Outlets, all you would hear is “why should I pay to park when there are shopping areas surrounding Worcester with plenty of free parking?” And yet many of these same shoppers would think nothing of driving to Providence Place Mall to shop and dine and I may add, PAY for parking.
What downtown needs are insurance companies, lawyer offices and professional offices and then the supporting businesses like restaurants, bookstores etc will follow. Otherwise you'll see Dollar Stores and the like if no-lo prevails.
John
Anonymous, honest question. If you lived near Boston would you shop in downtown Boston?
If the answer is no (which I am guessing it is) then you will probably never see why anyone would want to.
Sadly I believe this is how the majority of current Central Mass residents feel.
Anonymous:
Portland
Portsmouth
Newburyport
Gloucester
Dover
Haverhill
Lowell
Cambridge
Somerville
Newton
Newport
Keene
Brattleboro
Burlington
You are right though, all dead accept for Northampton.
I will tell you one thing all these towns have in common though, none of them are in Central Mass
Anonymous, Worc Center used to be like that all through the the 70's and well into the 80's. I.e. "where parking is a plenty and there are a dozen retailers at one location". IMO having to pay for parking was always a non starter. And this success was in spite of Auburn Mall which opened only a few years after the Worc Center Mall opened. The Auburn Mall genesis also coincided with the completion (substantial) of I-290. So what in god's name happened in Worc. to sink Worcester Center....one word: demographics.
Daniel, what do you suppose came first, the demise of the downtown shopper or the overabundance of parkign available in Worc.? Chicken or the egg? BTW folks, how much retail shopping space is planned at Hanover Sq vs what is there right now? Less?
David, I agree that Market rate houisng would be a boost to downtown. The only problem though is that downtown retail depends more on the transient shopper from suburbia than it does on downtown residents, excepting probably a downtown grocery store. I have heard nothing about any retail names signing up for Hanover Sq and getting office space in there has been more difficult than trying to pull crockodile teeth
David also, please do not forget that a non descript mall ( concrete bunker) was Worcesters savior for about 2 decades. I also tend to think that part of the "American shopping/dining experience" involves the notion of an automobile trip of some sort....not unlike the Sunday afternoon drive to nowhere of decades ago. My Gramps, who was made more in the mold of a cheap Yankee, used to drive to Sterling ever Sunday afternoon to buy eggs from an egg farm in his 4 door Ford sedan with the 400 cubic inch Cleveland V-8 in it.
Sadly, I do not see the suburban woman making DT Worc a shopping destination and they say women make about 99% of a households buying decision. I mean think about it, do any of youse guys give a rat's derriere what pattern the drapes are or whether the walls are painted pastel or wallpapered?
think alot of forsberg's notions of development harken back to his days ay HUD in the 80s
This is the anonymous poster before from 2:23 PM. Okay you are probably right, if decent people lived downtown, then they would shop downtown and retailers and restaraunts could survive. The people living outside of downtown would probably still avoid it. But even if you build housing downtown that is not low income, they are going to have a hard time selling because nobody wants to live downtown because there is nothing to do there. It's a catch 22. No businesses come until people come. No people come until businesses come. It's not Boston, people would prefer to live outside of dowtnown where as in boston they like being downtown. I think many of us just over estimate the potential of this city.
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