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Congress for the New Springfield

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Like the really bad song you can’t stop singing I have to give some credit to a fairly corny and terribly lame story I heard told perhaps 40 years ago but which always springs to mind whenever prevention and remediation are discussed. It had something to do with a mountain town that had a windy road and cars were constantly careening off the edge into the valley down below and the townsfolk were debating whether to install a guardrail on the road or to station an ambulance in the valley. Of course, prevention won out and a fence was installed on the road.

(Photos of the Dragonboat Festival on the riverfront)

The metaphor is apt when I contemplate how badly we need to stop fighting battles against people who want to see Springfield experience fiscal stability and economic health but who remain ignorant regarding the perils and pitfalls of auto-oriented development. Knowing that we need some combination of locally focused Congress for the New Urbanism and/or a local chapter of Strong Towns I was elated to attend the first meeting of a nascent Western New England chapter of the CNU.
(Exterior doors of city hall)

In attendance were a remarkable combination of individuals: There were people who clearly had no idea regarding what the CNU was, did, or stood for; and there were others who could quote Andrés Duany chapter and verse. The main presenter was brought into the New Urbanism at the same time and by the same means which I had been, which is to say James Howard Kunstler’s seminal work The Geography of Nowhere. As a Vermonter he brought a nuance which differed from most of the presentations I’ve watched from the annual meetings in some ways which clearly align his concerns with the issues we are addressing here, but there were other differences, primarily relating to the urban/rural divide which clearly separate his focus from what we experience in Springfield.

(Dr Seuss parade)

If the CNU, as a national and even international organization, can overcome the fact that its members come from such different places who puzzle over such differing problems then I am sure that we in Western New England can gain from working together despite our varied challenges. I recall that a decade and a half ago I mentioned the CNU to a planner  employed by the City of Springfield and she could not have been less impressed; in her mind New Urbanism was only about green field development. I was shocked at her initial impression, no doubt connected to reality in the sense that as a nascent idea New Urbanism was implemented in places very different from stagnant and stodgy New England. New Urbanism did involve whole communities being developed from scratch, but it was a misunderstanding of New Urbanist principles to think that there was no interest in protecting the existing healthy fabric of pre-war American cities and towns. 

(Quadrangle tree lighting)

Which brings us to what it can do for us here and now: In two conversations just prior to the introductory presentation I had remarkably disparate experiences: one was with a realtor who lived within a few blocks of me and who was overseeing the lease or sale of a property I pass by every day but had no idea how harmful surface parking was to center cities; the other was with a cycling centered professional who had actually attended a national CNU meeting. Imagine creating awareness on the part of the ground troops, as it were, of real estate sales, even to a minimal degree, of some of the basic ideas of good urbanism, and then combining that with bringing together educated specialists with interested amateurs (like me) and generalists; having a few more people in the room, wherever that room is and whether the topic is transportation, development, architecture, or parks, who are aware of the knowledge base New Urbanists have “rescued from the dumpster” of history. It could keep us from having to fight battle after battle after designs have been sketched out and opinions, however ignorant, have been formed.

(A well known local celebrity with ‘Boomer, the T-Birds’ mascot)

These are not bad people, they just don’t know any better. Their experiences over the last 20, 30, 40 years have trained them to think that auto oriented stroad development is the way to go because it did make them money in the short run. The broader picture that the whole exercise has impoverished the nation and that the apparent prosperity was an illusion is not obvious without stepping back and looking at larger trends. I’ve said before, but it is important to remember, many people right here in Springfield did many of the “right things” 40 years ago; but they didn’t work. Creating, and restoring, housing in the center of the city, even of the highest quality, mostly failed and became problem areas populated almost exclusively by the poor. Storefronts on Main Street were cleaned up, opened up, and renovated…only to be boarded up or to become home to 2nd storey uses like dental and insurance offices. Meanwhile the strip malls and big box stores in the suburbs were filled with the contents of traditional neighborhood retail, even if that was with chain store after chain store instead of locally owned shops.

(An empty parking deck at 10 am on a weekday in the downtown)

Bad ideas sometimes give positive short term results: People lost weight with Fen-Phen; Lyle Alzedo became all pro with steroids; Some people made big money on Dutch tulips and on pets.com…for a while. Educating people to see that “parking” is not “the problem”, that density is not inherently bad, that design matters, that mixed use creates dynamism, these are the ideas which, once internalized will tend to make every new development improve our community instead of constantly moving two steps forward, but one step back.

Cognitive Dissonance 

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I’m suffering from a bit of cognitive dissonance as I write these words; my generally optimistic perspective and “rose colored glasses” view of my hometown contrasted with my apocalyptic outlook for the American Empire and industrial society. Apart from one obvious exception I see in Springfield a community moving in the right direction and making smart choices about where to invest and how, but doing so as part of a nation which is foundering fiscally, financially, and philosophically.

Today one local television station’s top 4 stories are all connected to the grand re-opening of Union Station after more than 4 decades:

Passenger rail connected improvements have been made from Springfield south to New Haven, and from Springfield north to Greenfield. Just one engine in service with the necessary number of cars circulating from Greenfield to Springfield daily could connect the Valley in ways we’ve literally never experienced before. In January, 12 trains a day will carry passengers from our new Union Station to New Haven, connecting it to the Metro North commuter line into New York City. A regional rail study recommends connecting Boston to Montreal with daily train service; doing so would require improvements to a small portion of the Springfield to Boston line which would not only make Union Station the connecting point for the trip to Montreal, but would also facilitate more frequent east-west service to Boston, an idea that many are seeking to have studied in depth.

For me the reopening of Union Station means that anyone arriving by “Metro North-North”, Amtrak, Peter Pan, or Greyhound to Springfield will be able to connect to the PVTA G-5 and be dropped off within 20′ of my front steps if the 10 minute walk is too much:

Despite my earlier doubts and disappointment over the location and design of the parking structure, I am now convinced that the Lyman Street entrance is not only, as I suggested, the ideal pedestrian access point to the station, but that it would have been even if the Main Street frontage had been designed by Andrés Duany himself.

Most people will exit the station and find themselves in one of the most walkable, dynamic, and interesting neighborhoods in the city with Develop Springfield and Mass Development working together with others on the Transformative Development Initiative district and its new restaurants, cafes, businesses, and non profits centered around one of the city’s most important public spaces. 

If the enormous MGM development were not rising a few blocks to the south then this combination of intermodal transportation and pedestrian centered development would be the most singularly important event in the city in the last quarter century.

Here in Massachusetts I hope we can avoid the temptation to take whatever federal money might be offered for expanding or elaborating even more ridiculously our auto centered transportation system. In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene the federal government paid $7 million to repair a tiny stretch of road in a Massachusetts town with fewer than one thousand residents. That’s a level of subsidy that would fund the entire budget of the City of Springfield for 20 years (including road repairs).There’s talk of creating a new exit on the Mass Turnpike for the “Hill Towns” between Westfield and Lee; doing so would only encourage the destruction of more agricultural land for exurban residential development that would not only never pay back the initial investment but furthermore, would continue to burden the various towns, the state, and the nation for decades with more people in places that simply don’t function in ways that add up to a prosperous or resilient society.

Preserving Urbanism

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I’ve already written a handful of pieces on historic preservation. In my earliest essay bearing directly on the topic I make the argument that economic vitality is the only guarantor of long term historic preservation. In retrospect, and after reading some thoughtful arguments regarding the relationship of growth and historic preservation, I must admit that my argument is only valid for places like Springfield where economic decline and abandonment are the primary drivers of destruction and demolition; in places like New York City or Portland, Oregon it is precisely economic vitality which drives demolition.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that two places experiencing such different, and in many cases, opposing realities would see such widely different impacts from historic preservation. The first issue which leaps from the page is the claim, no doubt true, that “historic preservation is an obstacle to increasing density in the city”. In Springfield the exact opposite is true: historic preservation is a tool for maintaining density. Apart from the MGM development I cannot think of a single proposal brought before the local historical commission on the demolition of an historic property, whether during the time I have been a member or during the years I spent as an observer, which didn’t propose a decrease in density. 

Every proposal has been for “open space”:


Parking:


Or a change from pedestrian oriented to auto oriented development:


Here, historic preservation is always the defender of density.

The claim is made that studies demonstrate an impact between governmental oversight and racial and economic division. In a place where the White middle class is shrinking, like Springfield, historic districts represent islands of true diversity. All of the city’s historic districts are located either at the core of the city or in the inner ring surrounding it. My district is populated overwhelmingly by the poor and racial minorities, but the White middle class population is much greater than in similar neighborhoods not given that denomination. The same is true for every district in the city; true diversity is much greater within than without. The Whitest of the White neighborhoods are not historic districts, and the most overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods are also not historic districts.

It seems that nearly everyone agrees that some historic preservation for the sake of historic preservation is necessary; so far so good. But after that, arguments which are at their core debates regarding values and aesthetics take over. 

Sometime after the 1930’s this gas station in the South End was torn down:


Now the nearest gas station looks like this:


The newer one can service more cars at once and provides space for convenience shopping. For me, now that I know what once existed a few blocks from my home for providing people with petrol, I can’t imagine doing so at the current one without weeping.

Looking through those same photos I saw that this parking lot behind my house:


Was once this:


Basically a larger and higher quality version of my own home:

When we hear the expression “the ends justify the means” most often we shudder. It brings to mind historical analogies of omelettes and broken eggs. From an urbanist perspective, from a “Strong Towns” perspective, historic preservation is the best tool we have for improving the city in this place and at this time. In other places, and perhaps here at sometime in the future it will become an obstacle to “better outcomes”. 

In the same way that I argued that in the debate over “chaotic and smart” versus “orderly but stupid” that the only real goal should be smart and that whether one used orderly or chaotic means to get to that end was of no particular importance, I would argue that, armed with the knowledge that we have regarding the outcomes which are most beneficial to a community in terms of long term prosperity, we should use arguments for historic preservation to bolster other arguments for the subjective goal of “better urbanism”; like, for example, not tearing down this historic building at the most important intersection of the city for a surface parking lot:



Years ago now I supported, along with the other members of the historical commission, the demolition of this historic school:



To build this parking structure:

To facilitate the development of all this:


I weighed the necessity, value, and location of the parking relative to the value, necessity and location of the development it was to facilitate while taking into account the historic value and condition of the historic structure and found that the destruction of the school was acceptable. It was a value judgement. Enough members of the board agreed to allow the plan to move forward with our support. 

In other cases homes which would have been razed for parking or development have instead been moved to vacant lots nearby because of the intervention of the historical commission. 

It may be that in a high growth environment that historic preservation can only be a drag on progress, but I think the issue may have almost as much to do with process as with circumstances. Here, unlike the circumstances mentioned in Joe Cortwright’s piece on Portland, the creation of a local historic district requires a very public and political process including the support of the city council. Our commission is made up of at least two representatives of preservationist groups, but there are also designated spaces for architects and realtors, as well as three open seats for any city resident the mayor views as qualified. Once their two year terms expire any commissioner can be removed by the mayor at will and replaced by a new nominee who must go through a city council approval process.

The balance between politics and preservation means that no one is ever 100% satisfied with the outcomes. It’s a messy and imperfect process. I’ve voted, many times now, for things I utterly detested because it was what clearly needed to be done. On the other hand I know that we have nudged neighborhoods in the right direction, provided an outlet for democratic action, and saved structures vital to the city’s long term viability.

Without it my city would be worse off. If the process isn’t doing that for your community, try changing the process.

The Chicken Building

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The concept of the invisible bike rider has been addressed in multiple venues over the past few months and it has opened my eyes to not just a larger reality but also to some of my own biases. Yesterday as I strolled past Court Square I saw a resplendent cyclist with the bright yellow garb of the commuter cyclist, aerodynamic helmet on top and thousand dollar bike beneath him, whooshing by just as an invisible bike rider, dressed in some cargo shorts and a tank top (no helmet to be seen) was placing his junk bike on the rack of a southbound PVTA bus. I saw a dozen or more people on bikes in the next hour, not one was wearing any combination of Lycra or a helmet. 

In the same way our current conversation on cycling infrastructure isn’t really meant for most of the people in the city who ride bikes, I’ve noticed that most of the conversation around the retail implosion of recent years doesn’t mention stores of the kind which are most prevalent in my neighborhood: invisible retail if you will. These stores sell the wrong items, at the wrong price point, and, most importantly, cater to the wrong people: the people who actually live here!


The point has been pounded into me by the fact that part of the obsession with the razing of the Shean Block clearly has as an undercurrent the offense that its primary tenant, Crown Fried Chicken, commits every minute of every day of its existence: it reminds the besuited and yet benighted blue bloods of the business community that their city is made up partly of poor people of color. Leaving aside that on inclement Thursday afternoons, when dining with us downtown was inconvenient for my aging mother her most common food request for her youngest son’s delivery service was fried chicken, it is the case that Crown Fried Chicken is one of the few food establishments downtown that one can count on being open almost anytime one is hungry.

I have experienced, and I have on good authority from insiders, that the Shean Block is most often referred to as the chicken building or the fried chicken building by the developer and his minions. When I tried to discuss the topic with the head of economic development and the local MGM chief they both responded to my query about the Shean Block with the clarifying question: “The Fried Chicken Building?” It’s pretty clear that doing so makes contemplating its elimination more palatable and provides subconscious reinforcement for the rightness of any decision which will remove this eyesore from its position of prominence.

I don’t think the highest, best, or most likely use of that building will be a low end fried chicken place once it begins serving as the primary connecting point between a billion dollar resort casino and the downtown of one of New England’s largest cities, but I think the market ought to determine that, and not the misguided notion that removing the markers of poverty will eliminate the poor. We shouldn’t just allow the city to be the best city it can be for the people who actually live here, we should do our best to ensure that that is the case. Seeing dollar stores, bodegas, check cashing places, and downscale pizza shops as blight because one would rather see coffee shops, bistros, banks, and bookstores doesn’t change the fact that those places are where they are because they serve a purpose for the people who walk and bike past them… though not so much for the people who drive past…with their doors locked and their windows up.

In the specific case of fried chicken it turns out that it is becoming retro chic! I can’t imagine that people overall ever really stopped liking fried chicken; one of local hockey’s most popular promotions involved fried chicken: “When the Indians get brave, you get chicken!” (“And a roll!”) 

I’ve been told by people in the know that demand for retail just outside the casino is enormous. Filling the space currently occupied by Crown Fried Chicken, a pawn shop, a convenience store, the nail place, and the second hand clothing boutique will not be hard, but I hope every single one reopens nearby. Their continued presence implies solid demand for the goods and services they provide for the people who already live, work, and ride their crappy bikes helmet-less right here in The City of Homes.

Words of Wisdom

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Publicly available records of official municipal meetings held earlier this year revealed that a local developer intended to acquire and demolish a building, the Shean Block, at the corner of State Street and Main Street in the heart of downtown Springfield. In just the last month MGM announced during a meeting of the State Gaming Commission that they were in negotiations to put the market rate housing they are officially required to develop as part of their agreement with the Commonwealth in the very building that the parking which would take the place of the demolished structure was designed to accommodate. 

Putting a surface parking lot at the 100% corner of downtown Springfield and at the primary juncture of the MGM development and the rest of downtown represents an enormous obstacle to the long term transformative impact of the project for the city and to the financial return to MGM of their enormous investment. There is no guarantee moving forward that either goal will be achieved, but being complicit even passively to an action which so heavily weighs on the side of failure would be irresponsible. 

I felt so strongly about the backward thinking nature of the idea of the destruction of the street edge at such an important downtown location that I contacted Jeff Speck, knowing that he had consulted with MGM on the design of the project, to ask him to express his opinion on the subject and he went to the trouble of doing so after what I can only guess were very difficult conversations with MGM. I cannot thank him enough for writing these words which just last week I shared with members of the media and every member of the Springfield City Council:

I have been an outspoken supporter of MGM’s plan because I truly believe in the transformative impact the overall project could have. I have expressed my views forthrightly that this is an economic development program with an element of preservation and not the reverse. My primary concern here, despite the historic value of the property, is actually for all parties concerned in terms of its economic impact. 

Unfortunately there are many well meaning but ignorant people in government and in the private sector in this region who have no real understanding of what makes cities work. Confronting them can be difficult both politically and in terms of public perception, but there are actions which are so central to the success or failure of the entire project that they must be contemplated thoroughly before they are executed; a parking lot at the corner of State and Main falls into the category of a massively destructive idea. 

To destroy this building would be the height of idiocy.

Of Blind Squirrels and Broken Clocks

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I’ve been involved with the issue of pedestrian safety on State Street for more than two decades now so when Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns asked me to snap some pictures of the “desire paths” around and through the fences and hedges the city had “strategically placed” to discourage people from crossing the street at the Central Library’s main entrance I was eager to oblige. Word is that Chuck’s open letter on the topic has created a stir at Tapley Street and around City Hall. 

The 5 minutes I spent snapping pictures were entertaining, infuriating, and encouraging. Entertaining because I saw people scrambling between the chains along the desire path:

Infuriating because I feared for this older gentleman as he made the dangerous crossing:


And encouraging because, as I explained to people why I was taking pictures of them crossing the street to go to the library everyone agreed that the current situation was ridiculous and dangerous.

What I failed to notice until I passed by the library just yesterday however, is that the traffic itself is quite literally going out of its way to destroy the most prominent feature of the engineering profession’s failed attempt at a fix:


Can you see it? Automotive impacts are eating away the concrete and have eliminated entire segments of the safety rail. Imagine the inconvenience created if someone notices and these stairs are closed off to the general public while they await repair. I mean, if anyone ever used them it might create an inconvenience. Actually, since that stairwell provides the ONLY official pedestrian access to the lot, shouldn’t the entire lot be closed? You can’t have people entering and exiting the lot via the automobile entrance or down the embankment…”officially” I mean…since nearly 100% of visitors actually DO that already. But the city can’t admit that by just allowing this ridiculously expensive, unused, and now NOT TO CODE (is it?) stairwell to just sit there as is…can they?

Actually, the lady who was sitting on the concrete ledge waiting for her bus to arrive told me it had been like this for a long, long time. It does make for a nice place to sit and wait for the bus at least. Something to add to the list: broken clocks, blind squirrels, and ridiculously expensive over-designed staircases.

Spring Garden 2017

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Ever expanding and changing, our urban oasis is taking shape. 

We’ve added an asparagus bed (trust me, they’re there) which in years to come will provide some early season comestibles.


The garlic, after a Winter of discontent, is looking lively.


The potatoes look healthy.


More peaches than ever before; do I thin the fruit myself, or wait for the squirrels to do it?


These are beans, pigeon peas, and red cabbage.


My wife has planted an herb garden, with more still to come.


Tomatoes and peppers are just in, with some melons, cucumbers, and squash in the tower.


The strawberries, LuLu’s bed, and some overflow tomatoes.


Some hanging peppers and my wife’s favorite flower.


We’re removing the deck this Summer and moving the arbor in order to expand “the vineyard”.

Flowers in the front, though we may add some bags of edibles.

There’s lettuce scattered throughout (one of our experiments for the year) and I built a natural barrier to visually seperate our neighbors unkempt space from our own.


These pictures were taken over the last week, this morning it looks like this:

Rusting Last, Realizing Slowly

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I’ve asked why it is if bureaucracy and government interference are the causes of bad urbanism that the places most known for those things have the best urbanism: The Northeast, The Pacific Northwest, and Europe. To be clear, I don’t think that laissez faire capitalism is necessarily the primary cause of the woeful state of the American landscape, and it’s fairly clear that the Eisenhower interstate highway program, and federal subsidization and support for suburban single family home development are and were clearly part of the problem. But it’s also true that many of the worst cases of auto-centered development are in places with a reputation for being the most conservative and the most Republican: Arizona, the Deep South, Texas…

This question has re-emerged for me because I am stunned at how clear it is that Springfield is thoroughly experiencing two wholly contradictory processes at the same time: Urban rebirth; and Rust Belt auto-centered self destruction.
All over the country places like Omaha, and Oklahoma City seem to have already gone through the process of auto-centered self destruction and are ready to begin the inverse project of becoming people centered walkable environments. In Springfield the process of going car centered was so slow that it continues at the same rate today even as what I’m sure will be an equally slow, and contradictory process of restoring walkability begins to take shape.

Here in Springfield it’s amazing to watch the same people (!) who say all the right things about walkability and urban revitalization at one moment, in the blink of an eye not only allow, but advocate for car centered development to take place in startlingly close proximity.

My own South End neighborhood provides a perfect example. The powers that be understand that success from the MGM development will only come if people leave the MGM property and walk down Main Street and State Street to the performance venues, the museums, the restaurants, and the shops located blocks and blocks away from the resort complex. At the same time, however, they press for and celebrate demolition of historic pedestrian scaled buildings to be torn down to make way for auto oriented development at the center, on the periphery, and throughout of the neighborhood.

A local car dealer is buying up and tearing down building after building after building EVEN ALONG MAIN STREET in the South End for car storage and it’s being celebrated as ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; another developer wants to raze these buildings at the edge of the highway in order to put in place some kind of Taco Johns style project to replace that which they perceive as “old and blighted”:

and the city is pushing to expedite it!

And the saga of the Shean Block continues with even people at the forefront of making the downtown walkable shaking their heads as if unable to confront the cosmic stupidity of placing a surface parking lot at the core of the new, billion dollar initiative to create a walkable downtown despite the region’s largest ever parking garage being less than a block away. (More on this soon)

All of this at the same time that government sponsored organizations and local non profits work together with the city to bring together the precious gems of downtown into a more cohesive unit with park improvements, way finding programs, public transit initiatives, bike infrastructure plans, and too many other things to mention all focused on creating a people centered downtown. 

They’re giving a few blocks a blood transfusion as they attach auto oriented leaches to every extremity…and at the heart.
My hypothesis then is that in Springfield we have just been slower, not less willing, to annihilate that which was best in our built environment than much of the rest of the United States, and as we slowly allow the influence of the urban Renaissance to impact our decision making here it will continue to move forward in concert, somehow, with our continuing self destruction. 

A Seriously Modest Proposal

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Climate change is genocide. Sure, I’m in. If the foreseeable consequences of our behaviors in the more developed world are going to lead to the deaths of millions of people with entire human societies especially in the developing world suffering first and suffering the most then those of us who fail to alter our behaviors bear responsibility thereof.

Michael Klare has expressed this idea in an article at Salon and in interviews. He claims that those of us who are doing what we can to reduce our use of fossil fuels are more or less without blame, but that it is an obligation, once people are made aware of the global consequences, to make those changes. I am on board with this is as well, but there is a little something that sticks in the craw about this related to professor Klare.

He is called a Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies, but the primary locus of his teaching is on the campus at Hampshire College. My daughter graduated from Smith College, one of the five college consortium, and took at least one course on the campus at Hampshire College. I’ve been to a lecture at the National Yiddish Bookcenter, I’ve visited the Eric Carle Museum, and I’ve been to a wedding on the campus of the college. It has its charms. Wikipedia tells the story of the creation of the campus thusly:

It was a product of its time. An industrialized and mechanized society was being confronted by a counter culture which responded with a back-to-the-land ethos. The campus embodied separation from a wider society which was going in directions and growing in ways that these idealist sought to change.

But looking at the campus through the lens of not just climate change and resource scarcity, two topics the understanding of which Michael Klare can rightly be called an unparalleled expert, but of what he calls genocide, one can’t help but see as car-centric, fossil fuel dependent, and isolated a campus as there is in the United States:


The fact is this campus embodies everything that is wrong with the way which America has organized itself since World War II given the combination of an abundance of fossil fuel energy and land which existed: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Look at the massive parking lagoons; yes, surrounded by grass, rolling hills, and trees. If Hampshire College students wish to engage with the wider world they use buses and cars, and their teachers, including Dr Klare, surely arrive in the same manner or else why the enormous parking areas?

Imagine professor Klare recommending this game changing strategy: Hampshire College begins a 10 year effort to relocate the campus to an underutilized section of nearby Holyoke, Massachusetts. It returns the current property to agricultural use and/or it becomes a center for the study of permaculture focusing on sustainable and carbon reducing food production.

New students at the college are not allowed to own cars, or at least are not allowed to use them to come and go for classes. While the current campus is provided with bus service by the PVTA, it doesn’t have the connectivity to the system which downtown Holyoke already enjoys. Furthermore, Holyoke sits on a rail connection, a form of transport which is much more energy efficient that cars or buses, which students and families can use to come and go during holidays and breaks. Beyond even that, on a daily basis the most efficient car or bus trip is the one that’s never made because walking and biking are realistic and practical options.

Repurposing the enormous stock of underutilized structures and space in a city like Holyoke, in combination with a student body, faculty, and staff which finds itself enabled to engage not just in life on campus, but also life off campus without the need for fossil fuel energy, will also have the benefit of re-energizing Holyoke and drawing thousands and thousands more people to live with a smaller carbon footprint. 

If our current way of life is genocidal, as Michael Klare claims, then certainly he should insist that the institution he represents embody the change that such an awareness requires.

MegaProject versus the North End

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We’re running, quite by accident, a nearly perfect test of the philosophy that the small project focused on marginally increasing value in a relatively undervalued neighborhood is better than a mega project designed to transform a place. It would appear to be a totally unfair fight between a project in the North End which repairs sidewalks, improves lighting, plants trees, and re-paves the street, and a nearly billion dollar hotel, entertainment, retail, and housing project in the South End.

The South End would appear to have all the advantages: It is connected to the downtown, it has retained a healthy core of businesses from its Italian heritage, and it connects to a number of healthy, and relatively wealthy, historic neighborhoods. The North End is separated from the downtown by a Le Corbusier inspired urban removal district and a massive highway interchange, whatever the North End’s previous ethnic heritage (French Canadian? Polish?) it is such a distant memory that I can’t recall what it is, nor do I see any remnants thereof, and the one huge employer in the neighborhood((Baystate Medical Center) is so monolithic and self contained that there is no tradition of leaving the campus to purchase even lunch from one of the many Caribbean restaurants along Main Street.

The North End does have a much more visible and lively public park than the South End, and both connect at about the same distance to at least somewhat comparable larger parks in Forest Park from the South End and Van Horn Park in the North End. Both are poor even by Springfield standards, both have a majority of Hispanic residents with the North End being less heterogeneous. The North End also carries with it a heavier burden of being perceived as dangerous. From my own childhood the North End and what used to be called “Winchester Square” were understood to be two nearly “no-go” zones for the White middle class. 

On its face the North End experiment has every disadvantage: no connection to the amenities of the downtown, ethnic isolation, physical isolation, endemic poverty, and is getting a relatively small investment. On the other hand there is very little to lose here. Property values are already low, there are some incredibly well maintained and well restored historic buildings, but there are also vacant and blighted buildings as well. At least one major employer in the neighborhood is moving operations to a different part of the city(PVTA), whether they will continue to own and maintain their property or retain it for some use I do not know. Near the southern terminus of the neighborhood there is already some investment going on, but there are also a half a dozen or more vacant lots along Main Street which haven’t been turned into parking lots.

The North End (aka Memorial Square)

Le Corbusier-ville and the viaduct:

Main Street in the North End:



If we see over the next 5-10 years further movement toward rehabilitating the vacant and blighted structures, and some infill development occupies the now vacant plots along Main Street then I think the city will have seen adequate return in terms of maintaining the infrastructure of this stretch of Main Street and its environs.
The South End is a much trickier proposition. Keep in mind that the South End got the new sidewalks, lighting, and amenities nearly 8 years ago, but a tornado ripped through it just a few weeks after the project’s completion and a number of highly productive commercial and residential buildings were destroyed. Apart from the MGM project I can only think of one building which was completely destroyed having been replaced; many severely damaged structures were repaired, but there are still a handful of vacant lots along Main Street which had contained significant buildings before June 1, 2011.

The South End:


MGM and Main Street in the South End:

One consequence of the combination of the damage from the tornado and the volatility created by the enormous MGM project is that a very high percentage of store fronts from Central Street to State Street remain vacant. It has been reported that landlords have raised rents in anticipation of an MGM boom, and it is clear that potential retailers and entrepreneurs have no desire to get out ahead of the curve. In this we can glimpse a very large potential downside to the project; instead of breathing life into the district, it could suck all the life out of it. The tens of thousands of square feet of retail contained within the project could soak up all the demand created by the project and then some, the developer’s desire to give the core of the development a local flavor could remove that same flavor from the surrounding streets. 

On the other hand the potential upside is enormous. If the resort complex as a whole transforms the perception of the city and the massive investment in policing the Main Street corridor 24/7 induces people into engaging with the center city as a whole the benefits could be immeasurable. A 15-20 minute “walk shed” with museums, entertainment venues, restaurants, hotels, historic architecture, a major transportation hub, and a variety of residential options is not combination to be found just anywhere in North America.

Only time will tell. I hope that both projects will prove successful of course, and as with most “experiments” in the social sciences double blinding is really impossible so we’ll never truly know if the city might have been better off with one particular strategy or with no strategy at all.