Author Archives: Steve

Consider this a thought experiment based on science fiction or dystopic fantasy if you will. Imagine that places must be functional without the vast majority of their populations having access to cars. Which places survive, and which don’t? 

The Hudson River Valley is astounding in this regard. Only the enormous wealth of New York City and the huge demand for suburban style housing could have created the mass of ridiculousness that is so much of Westchester County. There aren’t just random houses here and there, but thousands of them built on hills and cliffs and ridges where no one had any right to expect a house to be built, on roads which, devoid of said houses, would appear to be nothing but trails beaten through the wilderness by thrill seeking lunatics; no one could walk 20 feet on them safely in the age of the automobile; if there were room for a sidewalk it would have two more houses on it instead!

Contrast that with the town centers of not just Westchester, but so many of the areas just outside New York City, all so walkable, all replete with mixed use buildings followed one upon another, block after block of place where a person could still live a “Leave it to Beaver” life without any difficulty whatsoever. When New York City declines, as it inevitably must, will these “preserved in amber” districts be at the core of a new localism, or will their almost universally despoiled outlands not have any capacity to provide the nearby connection to agriculture that such a future entails?

Comparing once again Nyack and Kingston it is clear that the former is much more affluent than the latter today, but Nyack’s affluence has much more to do with its propinquity to NYC than anything else whereas Kingston seems a bit too far away to owe more than a tiny portion of its success the City. On the other hand Kingston sits in a fairly undeveloped region and has a great deal of current and potential agricultural land in proximity. So, for Nyack, what helped preserve it in the short run may kill it in the long run, and what was a challenge for Kingston may be at the heart of its survival in the future.

Springfield owes a great deal of its infrastructural soundness to its being politically connected to Boston. The city itself couldn’t afford to maintain the schools, the parks, and the libraries as it does without state largesse. On the other hand, so far Springfield has proven too distant from both New York and Boston to be directly invigorated by them economically like Hoboken, or Providence, or Worcester. Could the same “Kingston Logic” apply here? What makes us too distant to be lifted by them may keep us at the necessary distance to avoid being dragged down with them when they inevitably crash.

If ever there has been a time when being left out of the growth which accompanies prosperity would be a blessing, then this last 75 years has most certainly been it. And it would be hard to argue that this hasn’t been a time when Springfield has been mostly left behind by our fellow Americans.

Spending a few hours at Old Sturbridge Village on Friday evening definitely altered my perspective on all things urban, if only for a few hours. The rather large agglomeration of historic homes and buildings brought together in what they’ve now pinpointed as being a re-creation of the year 1838 immerses the visitor, especially during an evening tour illuminated only by candlelight and oil lamps, in a New England where rail travel and the industrial revolution are just beginning to change the lives of the villagers. 

This “Sturbridge” is located about half way between Springfield and Worcester in central Massachusetts. The War with Mexico is about to explode arms production at the Armory in Springfield and the city’s population is in the process of tripling over a period of 30 years, and its first train station is about to open. In Sturbridge women are spinning wool into yarn by candlelight, cobblers are stitching together shoes, and shopkeepers are selling Jamaican rum at 6 1/4 cents a cup. Chestnuts are gathered both to eat and to feed pigs. Children learn to participate in the domestic economy by the age of 5 or 6 by learning to sew and knit. Poorer residents in small homes extinguish their small fires, even in winter, once the afternoon meal is cooked, no matter how cold the air temperature as precious, and much rarer, firewood is for cooking, not home heating: 

“Your home is warm in the summer and cold in the winter, why wouldn’t it be?” Said the “resident” of the small house.

My older brother and sister would tell me that our grandmother refused to let the electric stove my grandfather purchased for her into her kitchen, it stayed on the porch as a permanent fixture. What’s the Arab saying? My grandfather rode a camel, my father, an automobile, my son, a jet, and my grandson will ride a camel…more or less that, but with a wood stove.

Certainly these people would find a Greek or Roman village from thousands of years past as more intelligible than the city of today; and it represents a reality from only 180 years ago. It would be 20 years until the Pennsylvania Oil Rush. The world of the post Industrial Revolution is the only one most of us know, and was the only one most of our parents and grandparents knew, but it’s barely more than a blip on the timeline of human civilization.

A reader is surprised, and given climate change, somewhat heartened by the idea that I believe that fossil energy will “run out soon.” I really don’t. And I think, as David Collum said, whatever its impacts on our environment, we will “run the experiment”of burning all we can. When the debate on drilling in ANWR was raging I used to say I supported those who were against it, but not because I thought we wouldn’t eventually drill there, I think we’ll put an oil derrick on Abe Lincoln’s head on Mt Rushmore eventually, but the lack of EROEI will, if it doesn’t already, drain our civilization of its vitality and its benefits won’t be distributed as widely as they are now.

In winter I don’t get around the neighborhood as often on foot. The last week or so has been a pleasant exception to that rule and I found that each experience brought with it different insights regarding the state of the city.

Friday Night

I got down to the box office a little bit early to get T-birds tickets as last week’s Throwback Game had sold out, and that is starting to occur with wonderfully alarming frequency. I had the chance to thank the new general manager of the club for “saving hockey in Springfield”. I told him that I was a fan going back to the Coliseum days. He asked me my name and thanked me for the kind words.

My Baby Boomer self always arrives much too early to these things, and my Millenial friend arrived, as usual, neither early nor late. In the interim I saw an old high school acquaintance, a friend of a friend of a friend, waiting for his date to arrive. His demeanor and speech reminded me of my white working class roots. Nearly all of my friends from high school live in the inner ring of suburbs around the city, if they still live in the area, and that is where the culture in which I grew up still exists. Hockey is one of the things that can lure them back; at least for an evening.

My Millenial friend is a committed urbanist and brings the zeal of the convert to his efforts in the city. He describes himself as coming from a much more environmentalist starting point, but he has undergone a shift to more systematic green urbanism which includes everything from economics to transportation. He’s got the right mentality: it’s about fighting the fight, not about winning…at least in the near term.

Big crowd, big T-birds win, invigorating conversation, and more than a little nostalgia.

Monday night

After my Community Preservation Committee meeting I walked back through Court Square. As winter evenings go it was pleasant, and so there was something unnatural about how empty this most beautiful of public spaces was. Having spent so many years in Spain, the idea of such a space being so empty at eight thirty in the evening was disheartening, if predictable. 

Court House Walk, what should someday once again become the city’s most popular, as it is the city’s most authentic, pedestrian street was brightly illuminated and so I walked through that desolate pathway to the entrance of the MGM South End Market to use the facilities there. As starkly abandoned as was Court Square, so was this place surprisingly vibrant; dozens eating in the ersatz marketplace and hundreds more on the gaming floor. 

It has been a least a dozen months since we were told an announcement was coming regarding MGM, Peter Pan, and the Court Square Building. Perhaps no news is good news.

Wednesday Morning

My wife and I had a parent conference for Luna at her school. As I had taken a few hours of personal time during mid-term exams to attend, and none of my classes were scheduled for that day, we took a few minutes to have some breakfast and debrief.
It was 8:45 and so we decided on a breakfast panini and coffee at Hot Table. We hadn’t done that for a while and it turns out that the owners had acted on that behavior and were no longer serving breakfast. Strike one. 
My wife remembered a place on Market Street that was touting its breakfasts on social media; opening at nine. Strike two. 
Peeked around the corner; “Nosh” wasn’t open. Strike three.

Luckily, breakfast isn’t baseball; Palazzo was open “already”. We each got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich brought to our cute little table in a back room from which we could see the magnificent architecture of some of Springfield’s best 19th century buildings. Dozens of people were wandering through what has been made the most dynamic urban space in Springfield; C’mon Evan, you’re making everybody else look bad!

(From “Palazzo”…#metoo?)

I’m sure if these places don’t open until nine it must be that not enough people stop in on the way to work to grab coffee and a croissant. Evan’s is the largest building downtown without on site parking, perhaps his tenants don’t stop at the drive thru on the way in to work because they know they will walk by Palazzo. If someone works at Tower Square or Monarch Place on site or skywalk connected parking encourage different behavior. 

Thursday Night

The Student Prince. 5 times a year Springfield’s most famous eatery hosts a 6 course Beer Dinner. My wife and I attended the very first one just over a year ago and haven’t been able to go since either due to schedule conflicts or because they had sold out and we couldn’t get tickets. As odd as it may seem, neither one of us is a beer connoisseur, or even a beer aficionado, but the food has been spectacular, the company engaging, and the beers, interesting.

Last time we sat with some interesting people and spent much of the night discussing the food, the beer, and the absolute ridiculousness of much of modern art and architecture. One of our table mates was enamored of the avant-garde. He tried the old “you just don’t understand it” ploy; ah yes, “The Emperor’s New Blank Canvas”!

This time the primary topic was MGM, though we spent some time discussing drama as an outlet for adolescent creativity, Mayor Sarno, and, as the men seated near us were all suburbanites dining in downtown Springfield, the changing attitudes of people in suburbia towards the city. The two brothers and their step-father were headed to MGM after the meal. Their experiences had matched ours; the design and physical plant of the project were top-of-the-line, the quality of the food and customer service, not so much.

I expressed my view that I’m happy that it is so. I was concerned from the very beginning that MGM’s dining options might be of high enough quality, and low enough price, to siphon away customers from classic downtown and South End establishments but, honestly, anyone with any knowledge of the area knows you can get better food at a fraction of the cost if you walk a block or two; Red Rose being the prime example. I do wish the customer service at MGM would rise to the level of what I’ve heard one sees in Vegas, instead of sinking to Springfield’s less rigorous “oh, are you still here” standards.

Our table mates were passionate about this being Springfield’s shot; what we need is for local entrepreneurs to fill the vacant storefronts across the street from the casino. From an urbanist perspective the buildings are the best, nearly perfect in every way…except for the almost total lack of anything happening I mean.

Sunday Morning

My wife and I enjoy reliving one of our first great adventures from the early days of our relationship. On one of her first visits to Springfield she got snowed in and we wandered down Main Street in the aftermath of the storm, sometimes swimming through waist deep drifts of fine, powdery snow, until we made it to Panjabi Tadka. After yesterday’s storm then we wandered down to MGM, knowing that, while just the hotel restaurants are open on most Sunday mornings downtown, and we had eaten recently at La Fiorentina, the one place open on Sunday’s in the South End, and in the aftermath of the storm it might not be open.
The TAP sport’s bar at MGM had been advertising its weekend breakfast options and we knew it would be open. With Luna in tow we trudged through the sleet and made our way down to the resort casino. There was one very overwhelmed waitress in a half empty dining area, the table had either salt or sugar all over it, it took a while to get us our food (though we weren’t in a rush), and the food was average, which is to say aside from being in larger quantities, roughly on a par with Friendly’s…but at 3x the price.

On the other hand, it was actually open. One very deeply held Springfield tradition is to just not be open even when YOUR schedule says you WILL be. My wife and I got up early one Sunday, years ago, to have brunch at Chef Wayne’s Big Mamoo…their last brunch of the season…through June…and on that last Sunday in June on that bright Sunday morning…closed. Nadim’s went to great pains to push its New Brunch Tradition…a few weeks in, having purchased a Groupon…off we went…to find it closed, and Nadim’s no longer offering brunch.

As Woody Allen might have said, “90% of restauranting is just being open.”

Characteristics and traits in individuals can and do manifest themselves more generally across societies but the outcomes they predict can be very different due to scale. I’ve witnessed the Dunning-Kruger effect in myself and in my career over the years, only coming to understand my behavior and the behavior of colleagues in the context of self-awareness and the lack thereof. I’ve become much more humble regarding my ability to teach as I’ve improved: I wasn’t very good for at least my first four or five years but only getting fired from my first full time teaching gig really woke me up to how great an impediment my weaknesses were. I’m still not a spectacular disciplinarian and I need to have a very precise idea of what I want to accomplish in a class period to allow my showmanship and content knowledge to engage the students in ways which highlight those strengths.

In my career I’ve been surrounded, mostly, by people like me with certain strengths and weaknesses who’ve managed over time to become very good at what they do. On the other hand I’ve witnessed some amazing outliers; I mean people with absolutely no self awareness, and gaping holes in their instructional practice who not only have no idea (really, none) of how bad they are but who honestly believe themselves to be among the elite. In a playful interaction with what I might call the Peter “Vice Principal” I’ve seen the self confidence of these types put them into positions of authority and supervision with absolutely no understanding of even the most basic principles of classroom teaching.

For these people there is not enough Kool Aid in the world when it comes to imbibing the educational fads and the dogma of “21st Century Learning”; Yeah, it’s 2019…even if we teach them to plow a field with oxen…it’s still a 21st century skill at this point! I always think to myself: Socrates was a better teacher than I am despite never having attended a single professional development seminar for continuing education credit; but the Kool Aid is where I’d like to shift the focus of this essay.

We were picking up Luna’s friend to come over the house and finish a science project; Luna had been out most of the week performing in the lead role of “Anansi the Spider” (Giving 8 performances in 4 schools over three days!). Her partner lives in an area where a local developer has used the combination of tax credits for historic preservation AND low income housing to revive an entire neighborhood. This developer does incredible work, but what ends up shining through is the quality of the streetscape. Just getting out of the car to walk over to the door of her building, even on a frigid winter morning was a delight; there were families walking home from a trip to the corner store, kids headed out to play, grown-ups hopping in their cars and off to do their Saturday afternoon thing. I wish I had taken a picture, but here are some Google street views:

The society that built this neighborhood was confident, but not grandiose. Overall it conforms to design principles and concepts which had been acquired and internalized over thousands of years while accommodating novelties like gas lines and electricity. I’m sure the developers and engineers understood the limitations of the city’s water and sewer systems and made sure that their future tenants could count on potable water coming in, and not so potable water being taken away by the existing system without any heroic interventions. They also knew that their tenants would be walking distance from the region’s primary industrial employers, and within a few minutes of a street railway line to the downtown. And it was beautiful, from the fluer de lis over the entryway to the elm trees along the streets.

Enter post World War II horizontal style auto-oriented American development; The Sum of All Kool Aids, (Kools Aid?), and a death spiral of societal Dunning-Kruger. What we’ve done is so obviously horrific, so clearly without redemption, so unmistakably ruinous, so patently ugly, but even at a time when the resources to continue the project are diminishing, the impacts of its effluent are multiplying, and the consequences of its limitations are manifest we plow on without the slightest hesitation. 

It doesn’t work. It’s ugly. It’s miserable. But people pay a premium for it. If you haven’t already, head over to Granola Shotgun and read Johnny’s two latest posts(Here, and here) and the comments: Homeless camps across from $1.2 million homes, home values of half that amount being viewed as “low”, zoning laws and regulations requiring that private condos look like Pruitt-Igoe, and people lining up to take out 50 year loans to buy units that might be lucky just to last that long. Johnny will comment something which ends with “shrug” or “meh”, and I see his perspective…at a societal level; it’s done, we’ll have to live with it. 

It’s the individual I don’t understand: Someone has to buy it I guess, but why would you? With my oft repeated caveat: there is very little distinction between being prematurely correct and just being wrong: This economy and many of its housing markets have been distorted for decades. If you think your house is really worth much more than $200,000 dollars whatever it is and wherever it is in a nation where the median household income is around $60,000 a year, you’re insane. Once the Ponzi scheme of financialization, extreme indebtedness, and artificially low interest rates breaks down home values will fall to and through the level that actual people can actually afford sustainably; my guess is that most will be well under that number in unhyperinflated dollars…including my own…which already is!

I have no idea how much longer the Titanic will remain afloat. I’m trying to arrange my life so that I can still hear the string quartet playing on deck while I ensconce myself in a lifeboat. I’ve written too many times already about my status as an urban prepper though, so I shan’t bore you more with that now…next week perhaps. 

My stepdaughter has been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack obsessively over the last few weeks, in and of itself not so objectionable, but there’s a song tucked in there with an appallingly anachronistic, though seemingly obligatory, celebration of “The Greatest City in the World”! My first response was “…this is set in 1780 or so…why are they singing about (60x the size) London in this musical about the American Revolution set in New York?” Between that and the ridiculous claims about the pizza I’m fed up with NYC’s narcissism…but not so fed up that I won’t acknowledge the one area of culinary and cultural superiority New York has on New England: the bagel.

When we used to make weekly or bi-weekly trips into New York for LuLu to see her dad I would request a stop at a bagel place to get some real bagels. When LuLu’s dad moved here my wife started making her own bagels. At this very moment I am consuming a homemade sourdough bagel…grilled with butter and topped with cream cheese. Elizabeth hates the waste that most sourdough starters recipes entail and so she uses the theoretically discarded starter to make these:

I used to eat grocery store bagels; the onion ones are good for turkey sandwiches. There might even be some decent ones around here someplace, I’ve just never had one.

If we’re at someone’s house for brunch and they have typical bagged grocery store bagels I either slather them with cream cheese…and shut up, or I eat something else; I don’t share with them my agonizingly pretentious philosophy of the bagel; I save that for you, dear reader (No good deed goes unpunished).

Months ago I had taken these photos:

To respond to some articles I saw on CityLab complaining about “dollar stores”. I found the whole thing preposterous. It was the usual moaning and groaning about how the poor get stuck with shitty stuff while the rich get the nice stuff: Yeah, that’s what “rich” and “poor” mean, if you think about it. Unfortunately for my ego Strong Towns got to the subject before I did and Chuck said pretty much what I wanted to say: Dollar stores are a symptom, not the disease and people shop at them because they fill a need. Beyond that, the two closest dollar stores to my house A) don’t have on site parking and B)have repurposed existing buildings. I applaud them for both.

The end of the CityLab piece asked this vapid question:

I’ll answer it: Of course they don’t, and therefore it wouldn’t make any difference. Most of us don’t. Food science has spent billions engineering cheap foods that satisfy our cravings and AgriBiz marketing departments have spent billions in advertising to make us desire what they produce using the most subsidized crops.

I have the luxury of having a wife who is thoughtful about food, loves to cook, and works from home, and so she often arranges her day around cooking. Almost every evening includes a meal prepared from scratch. In the summer tomatoes from the garden are constantly being turned into homemade sauce, and hot peppers into salsa. In the fall grapes and peaches are turned into wine. In the wintertime we’ve paid for a CSA share of veggies.

We get the winter share from an organization here called “Gardening the Community”. My wife and I became acquainted with it years ago when we were shopping at a place, then called the reStore(great name), now called Eco Building Bargains (m’eh) where used and repurposed items are sold (At least one of my readers shops there, and I owe him a post about places to eat in Springfield, but I digress). The head of the organization was trying to transport a door for a shed in her Prius: We saw the problem and volunteered our Chevy S-10. When we dropped off the door we took a tour of the tiny community garden which has since become a large community garden, greenhouse, and neighborhood store.

I was at said store a few weeks ago picking up our “share” and commented on how wonderful the place was. I also mentioned the Domino’s Pizza which had just opened down the street. Leaving aside eating that pizza when there are some great local places nearby, we talked about the challenges which exist for people in this neighborhood regarding food choices. This great, inexpensive, community store is located at the heart of the neighborhood, but do people have time to cook, time to buy the food, kitchens in which to cook, utensils to cook with, the knowledge of how to prepare them, and the buffer in the budget to waste the money on food when the fresh stuff goes bad? This place has a kitchen and now offers lessons on how to cook; I’m sure they’d let people use their kitchen if they needed to. I can’t imagine a better or more thoughtful group of people doing what they are doing.

But most of the people in the neighborhood don’t take advantage of their services.

The bottom line is that they don’t see it as worth their time and effort.

On the other hand I was at a New Year’s Eve party in Springfield’s wealthiest suburb. I overheard people talking about “Hello, Fresh”, the make-it-yourself meal delivery service. The hostess of the party heard the conversation as well and commented to me, knowing of my wife’s Foody-ism, that we obviously didn’t need such a service. True. But these people, among the elite, at least geographically in our region, couldn’t be bothered to stop at a fresh food market, carefully select a suite of foods that could be combined for a meal, carry those foods home (probably in a huge SUV) and prepare them any more than the people in Six Corners.

That is what THEY were saying, in exactly those words, at this party.

How bizarre to expect that people who don’t have cars to haul the food, or enormous kitchens with wiz-bang gadgets to prepare the food, with schedules that don’t accommodate family meal times, and employment that not only leaves them with less money, but probably feeling less fulfilled at the end of the work day, WOULD be able to do so. Like it or not the dollar store, or Domino’s, gives them what they need.

I don’t eat better or healthier than anyone because I am a better person or because I have earned it. My life allows me the luxury to eat well, and I still sometimes go out of my way to eat crap. Yes, I’d like a little “Big Y” down the street, as I said a few weeks ago, and it annoys me that they don’t see the opportunity this area affords, but I don’t blame Dollar Tree or Family Dollar for opening up where Trader Joe’s and Big Y won’t.

(LuLu skating on a weekday at MGM…weekends are packed so nobody skates there, it’s too crowded)

The end of the year brings out not only the Year in Review essays but also the Predictions 2019 pieces. I’m not someone who is afraid of being wrong so my reluctance to make an attempt at guessing what’s in store for us in the upcoming year isn’t out of fear of being inaccurate, it’s just that I can’t determine for myself what I really believe. I can make an argument in my head for a particular outcome; let’s say an economic crash on the order of a Great Depression, but I can also see how that, just as reasonably, not only might not happen, but that its opposite, a boom time for the economy, might somehow occur in its stead.

As relatively trivial as it might seem, it’s similar to how almost any great sporting victory could be erased by changing a tiny variable in one sequence of events in one game (Exactly where the thrill of watching comes from!); in the end the outcome was “evitable” whether or not 10,000 experts predicted it.

As far as the year in review goes, 2018 was as big a year for Springfield as I have witnessed in terms of potential game changers:

*The Hartford Line of CT/Rail connecting to, and Peter Pan opening its headquarters in Union Station.

*CRRC beginning production of rolling stock at its Springfield plant including the delivery of the first cars to the MBTA and contracts to build cars for transit systems in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

*The opening of the MGM resort/casino in downtown Springfield.

On a smaller scale new businesses have opened…and stayed open in the downtown, and there were too many sidewalk, park, and bike infrastructure improvements to identify individually in a single, concise blog post.
(A new-ish shop in the Marketplace)

A look ahead? What I see, or perhaps what I don’t see which concerns me is how little immediate follow on from these developments I see coming on-line in the immediate future. There are perhaps a dozen developments proposed in the perfectly nebulous “middle term” to make one downright Pollyannish; that is unless that “one” can think of perhaps 3 score similar plans which not only were never completed but which were in fact never even truly begun! My “Downtown of the Middle Term” has condominiums and golf on the riverfront…along with a new marina, various high rises for businesses and residences, art spaces, pedestrian only streets, movie theaters, grocery stores, restaurants, at least two baseball stadiums (stadia), a “NOT a parking garage” bus station on Main Street and so, so much more.

(The opening of Naismith’s Pub and Pretzel)

Right now, located mostly in the penumbra of the middle distance, we’ve got three more hotels, a renovated vaudeville theater, one transformed industrial/apartment building, and 50+ units of market rate housing owned by, managed by, or named for MGM, a new Wahlburgers, some kind of museum themed storefront retail, and a new Main Street commercial development. Opening this spring, on the other hand, we have…nothing. Government is coming through with the completion of two more newly renovated parks, and the addition of two trains a day out of Springfield north to Greenfield passing through Northampton and Holyoke. On the horizon I see government expanding commuter rail both north-south and east-west and, perhaps, a new county courthouse located somewhere around Union Station but those outcomes pertain as well to the middle distance.

The question is, in the midst of this retail apocalypse will local entrepreneurs open up storefront shops across or down the street from MGM? Will restauranteurs see the enormous success of Red Rose, offering good food at reasonable prices just outside the MGM footprint, and copy that model with food offerings not otherwise available downtown: Crazy, exotic, nearly unheard of cuisines like “Mexican”, “Japanese”, “Thai” or even a real diner?

Seriously. 15,000 people a day coming to MGM, many more thousands of employees and residents…and ZERO places to buy a burrito.

“Why don’t you do it, Steve?”

Because, honestly, I’m closing in on a six figure salary doing what I do in a very low risk sitch-a-migation. I think the burrito place will need customers once it opens anyway, and I am prepared to be their #1 customer. Sounds like a great opportunity for an immigrant…perhaps from (¡)Mexico(!) or, as with most “Mexican” places around here, someone from El Salvador or Nicaragua: Shred some chicken, season some beans, throw in some cheese and whatever and…”pum”…burritos.

(My nephew in the ballon parade)

The big things have been done; big things which did a fairly good job of handling the “little things” like improved pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, better signage, and a generally even more attractive Main Street. There are people: The Thunderbirds are well on track to setting a franchise record for home attendance at 4,500 per game. There are more concerts than we’ve seen in decades, and a new MGM comedy club opening next month. There are already 4 proposals for recreational marijuana shops in the downtown, at least one looks almost ready to open. 

There are instances where mega-projects use up all the available oxygen and everything else around them dies: Baystate West was an excellent example of this. For this neighborhood I’ll gladly assert that this is not the case; the people I see at MGM are mostly new blood, many of them first time visitors, and they are leaving the footprint to go at least as far as Red Rose and perhaps to a hockey game. This is the moment, if we locals don’t seize it we’ll have no one but ourselves to blame.