On being a selectman

Emails this weekend to figure out how to have people express support for Sen. Timilty’s budget amendments for the Medfield State Hospital clean up, and today emailed Senate President Murray myself.

Today I also dealt with a new member to the MSH study committee and reviewed emails about the ad hoc 4 town committee studying the Bay Colony Rail Trail.

I am continuing to ruminate about the town’s ability to impact the development of the downtown – I think we missed a major opportunity several years ago when we did not push to support the Montrose School site being developed with mixed use housing and retail uses.  It would have made the downtown slightly larger, which we do need, moved the center of the downtown off North Street, and would have provided housing without many school children.  Those proposals needed a zoning change to happen, and there was no support at the time for that by the administrators and/or at the Board of Selectmen.

At the moment there are several downtown sites that are empty, and the town needs to be as proactive as it can be to figure out how best to get those sites filled with optimal tenants.

• The former Strata Bank spot remains empty
• The Cushman House on North Street, owned by the Montrose School, is both empty and falling down
• The former garage on Jane’s Avenue is empty
• The Mobil Station site is in transition
• The former Coldwell Banker office on Main Street is empty
• We need to do something to make the Park Street retail area more visible to traffic on Main Street

Both our blessing and our problem result from the same fact, that none of these sites really lend themselves to occupancy by the chain stores or restaurants that seek a site with a building surrounded by a sea of asphalted parking lot.

The downtown study committee commissioned an initial study of the downtown, 5-10 years ago, that told us to focus on the block surrounded by Main Street, North Street, Frairy Street, and Upham Road, with the First Parish Meeting House and Bakers Pond as the center of our town, having all the retail establishments open onto the parking lot in the middle of the block.  That study also recommended a pocket park next to Zebra’s and a green path along Vine Brook.

At the time, we heard from Norwood’s planner about its strategy of providing more liquor licenses to lure more restaurants to their downtown, and the large grants they got to improve their street scape with street lights and façade upgrades.

We may not be in ultimate control what tenants what rent spaces, but we should actively work to see what we can do to improve the downtown.  Perhaps we can still parlay that initial $30,000 study into the larger grant monies that we thought would be available at that time after we had the first study in our hands.