The MGM resort casino was the focus of a news feature on Connecticut Public Radio last week. As one would expect from a CPB production it was generally fair, thoughtful, and well produced; it also took very few risks and generally trod the pathways one would expect.
There were two glaringly contradictory “fear pairs”, each brought up multiple times but without ever acknowledging their mutual exclusivity. My favorite goes back to the original anti-casino campaign in the city and it goes like this: NO ONE is going to come to a resort casino in downtown Springfield…and the traffic is going to be horrific! Coming in a close second to that is: “All the jobs created by the casino are going to be crap…and Connecticut is going to fight tooth and nail to keep those crappy jobs in Connecticut where they belong!”
On a much more important note, especially with the release of Richard Florida’s new book which he says takes an honest look at some of the flaws in his original “creative class” hypothesis, there was the introduction to the piece which showed some marked incredulity at the idea of anyone voluntarily attempting to enjoy themselves in Springfield. Florida’s work tends to be data driven, but I hope he casts an eye on the culture we’ve created which doesn’t allow for love of place unless that place is at some cultural extreme.
Rather than try to detail how that works in this essay I’d rather take you on a thought experiment. Be patient, this is going to take a few bullet points, but it is precisely that fact which makes the point.
Imagine a friend tells you about a little neighborhood in New York City, or maybe Boston or San Francisco:
It has an art museum with works by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart, Daniel Chester French in its American collection and Tiepolo, Titian, Picasso, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, and more in its European collection with a smattering of O’Keefe and Calder to boot.
Across a little plaza there’s a classic little Victorian museum with a huge collection of armor and weapons from Asia along with a huge room filled with American landscapes and other pieces from the XIX century.
Nearby there’s a brand new children’s museum dedicated to the work of Dr Seuss and an interactive sculpture garden inspired by his work in the aforementioned plaza. Before you wander off check out the quirky little science museum and the statue by Augustus St Gaudens just outside the park.
On the other side of this cluster of museums is an industrial history museum with a handful of classic cars, including some of the oldest American cars ever produced and a huge collection of classic motorcycles.
On the way up to the nearby National Park there’s a brand new starchitectural wonder designed by Moshe Safde, and inside the park there’s a museum with an enormous collection of firearms. The park provides a beautiful view of the area below.
If you head the other direction from the plaza where the museums are clustered there’s an amazing historic district with a church designed by H.H. Richardson and some really impressively restored French Second Empire row houses.
Walk a block from there and there’s a Main Street with some cool buildings and every thing from grab and go food to some really nice sit down restaurants: There’s German, Indian, Cajun, Italian, Barbecue, Lebanese, Puerto Rican, and Chinese to name a few. If you go north there’s a newly refurbished train station from the golden age of the American railroad, if you go south there’s another Richardson building in the region’s oldest park.
The church in that park is neoclassical, the governmental complex is among the finest City Beautiful monuments in the United States (as is the library you passed on the way to the National Park).
If you look north you’ll see two hotels, in case you want to stay the night, but walking south you’ll start walking past the new MGM complex: movie theaters, retail shops, a wiz bang bowling alley, a food court, some restaurants on the Main Street, an open air plaza for entertainment and a spot for farmer’s markets and craft fairs in nice weather, and ice skating in the winter. They’ll be taking over management of the performance venues I forgot to mention. There are symphony and theatrical productions during the season as well as AHL hockey, MGM promises to bring pop music concerts as well as events like cirque de soleil.
Once you get beyond MGM there’s a little Italian neighborhood with multiple delis, cafes, restaurants, and even a little florist shop and a bakery. That’s where I spend most of my time.
Yes, obviously this is my neighborhood, and I don’t mean to imply for a second that it’s nothing but sweetness and light here but I want to highlight how ridiculous it is that a news outlet would show any incredulity regarding the potential viability of the place as a tourist destination. The only explanation is that even an enterprise like public radio which prides itself on broad based objectivity (except regarding America’s right to bomb…but that’s for a different blog) is infested with the American invective for small (American) cities.
There has always been a cultural pull toward the biggest cities and the greatest capitals of culture of course, that I understand, but even George Bailey had people try to argue him out of leaving Bedford Falls, today it seems everyone, even family, would not only be telling him to leave but would be packing up to leave with him. With so many of our communities having been hollowed out to the point that a young man’s dying thought of his hometown might be “the curb cut between the Chuck E. Cheese and the Wal-Mart” it makes sense that everyone would yearn to be someplace authentic, but then why do so many of our most genuine places receive more opprobrium than affection?
For me the answer rests somewhere in the culture which can only see black and white: There is one champion and all the rest must be losers. It’s an almost Manichaean worldview where small cities are somehow both the opposite of nature and the opposite of real cities. In this area people claim Boston (somehow) as a relevant cultural marker, but skip on any allegiance to the closer municipalities which in fact provide the economic base on which they exist. In Spain people take pride in their community of origin no matter how humble; to not is like hating your own mother or father. In the United States to love your hometown and to stay there is only indicative of a lack of ambition; you must leave the tribe and your family to show independence.
I’ve always had the opposite view: Any idiot can move to trendy place. The iconoclast sees the uniqueness of the place where he or she is and revels in it. My fellow Massachusetts natives Emerson and Thoreau each expressed this same idea if in somewhat different ways. I have been to 3 continents, 10 nations, 46 states, and countless cities. I’ve lived in Europe and the Mountain West as well as Massachusetts, I’ve travelled with students a dozen times and seen hundreds of historic places; my hometown has no need to be embarrassed by what it has to offer, it has a significance, a value, an attraction all its own as do so many cities its size, and treating with disdain the idea that people might want to experience it for the sake of enjoyment, enrichment, and even enlightenment from time to time is ridiculous.
Very nice writeup! Makes me want to explore!
Thank you
Thank you.
Excellent post, Steve. Really enjoyed your love of place, and can tell you deeply live where you are. You’ve taken the time to sift the gold nuggets from the sand and gravel. And when you develop that prospector’s eye, you start seeing more and more treasure.
I do same for my midwestern town of 12500. I’m getting better at it, and my understanding of the place grows in different ways. There is so much to learn historically, geographically, culturally even if most dismiss it as a dull little nowhere. I defend it and I build it both in simply appreciating it.
You have made me want to visit Springfield. You are a tourism brochure without the schlock.
Do you blog about your place? Does someone else? It’s a shame how overlooked so many fantastic places are in this country!
I do a lot of writing and thinking and promoting of my place, yes. But not a blog. Yet. Mean to. I’m too busy advocating for, improving, representing, politicking about the place to clear the time to write about it. Yet. Your blog is an inspiration, though.
Much more important: those who can’t, write!!!
And never mind the whole of Forest Park – (from Wikipedia) Forest Park . . . one of the largest urban, municipal parks in the United States, covering 735 acres (297 ha) of land overlooking the Connecticut River. Designed by the renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Forest Park features a zoo, aquatic gardens, and outdoor amphitheater, in addition to typical Olmsted design elements like winding wooded trails, and surprising, expansive views.[1][2][3][4] The site of America’s first public, municipal swimming pool . . .
Or the Hall of Fame, or the other parks or any of the other things close by from 6 Flags to the Wisteriahurst!
I think many companies miss the mark when they only locate in large cities. Springfield, for example, has excellent housing stock at reasonable prices, good highway access, ease of getting to Boston or NYC, cultural opportunities, colleges and universities and much more. when a company locates in a big city, the congestion is awful, the housing stock is very expensive, etc. They need to start thinking outside of the box and consider a smaller city with an easier style of living.
Thank you Steve for your insightful essay. I share in your enthusiasm about all that Springfield has to offer. Increasingly many of the jewels in the city have been discovered and brightly polished, Union Station, Forest Park and the museums come to mind. In my 21 years of living in Springfield I have never been more proud to call our city home. So much more is percolating across the city beyond the MGM complex- which in many ways will contribute positively to downtown. I am hopeful that when people come to Springfield for their first look or third they will find something that will keep them coming back!
Thank you!! This is excellent. I work in downtown Springfield and live nearby. I think the city is filled with incredible beauty…the architecture downtown and the quadrangle and Court Square are some of my favorites, but I look out onto the Campanille which is a structure that captivates me every single day. I am a photographer and it is probably my favorite place to shoot. We love Nadim’s and Big Mamou and Panjabi Tadka and Theodore’s and 350 Grill. We love the Symphony and City Stage and Jazz Fest each summer. Springfield has so much to offer. I wish more people would see it.
These features and so much more await for your delight in Springfield, MA. Thank you for Education on this gem.
I love this blog and the comments are so refreshing. Beyond the seemingly obvious but elusive fact that we have incredibly beautiful architecture and wonderful cultural assets we are also a city of people and it is in our psyche that we need to connect with one another and to these places. Blogs like this go a long way to enlighten and make us aware of our surroundings. As if our eyes have been closed for decades and only now are we challenged to see what we have in front of us and behind us. If MGM is the catalyst for this new awakening that that is enough for me I believe that our sensibilities will continue to grow and change and evolve and Springfield will once again Rise as the cultural center of the region. The reason why I work so hard on the Springfield jazz and Roots Festival is for this very reason, because it really enables us to connect with 0ne anouther in a positive environment that we call Springfield the people who come to celebrate the music are celebrating each other in the dance in our hearts reverberates far and wide into the heart and the soul of the region .
Hello,
What a great blog. As a born and raised Springfield / Longmeadow boy, I still have strong feelings about restoring the area and its potential to be the bedroom community it once was. The parks, gardens, great old buildings, all help create a very vibrant and livable city.
Evan Plotkin and his family have long been firm supporters of the city, having been the original real estate management and leasing firm in the city. Evan has some great ideas, so listen to him.
I thing that MGM could be a catalyst for growth. Unlike Foxwoods, Springfield is a vibrant historic city, not a parcel of farmland in the middle of nowhere. Springfield can make this work, it just takes some insight, enthusiasm and hope.
We have the backbone, the infrastructure, and the culture to make Springfield once again a great small US city. We have diversity, culture, and most importantly great people who want the city to succeed.
I hope this all goes well, I am behind it, and I know Evan Plotkin will make this happen, even if it kills him. Help out, contribute, even if it’s just commentary.
Thanks,