Folks like Vicki Danberg and Chris Steele are putting a lot of good effort into revitalizing Newton Centre, but their efforts, as captured in the TAB’s Ashley Studley’s piece on Newton Centre (not online yet) seem like a band-aid on an arterial bleed.
The piece talks about ice rinks, employee parking, and local events. All good, but they pale in the face of the structural problems facing Newton Centre, and the other village centers:
- For generations, retail has been migrating to highways (our Boylston Street/Route 9) and out of city centers. Not more than two miles away from Newton Centre, construction is full-steam ahead on Chestnut Hill Square and more renovation is around-the-corner for Chestnut Hill Shopping Center (the lower mall)
- The three Chestnut Hill mall-like thingies all have city-mandated free parking
- Local independents cannot compete against chain economies of scale
- The Internet is taking a bigger-and-bigger share of the retail pie
- The Internet provides a more than adequate substitute for the kind of specialized knowledge that used to be the exclusive domain of small-businesses
It’s going to take an awful lot more than ice rinks to reverse these trends. If we want vibrant village centers, we, as a city, need to ask ourselves some hard questions and then take some big steps.
First and formost, commercial centers need people — feet on the street. As a number of smart people have said to me and in earshot lately, we need to decide if we want to be a suburban city, an urban city, or, at a minimum, a city with some significant sections of urban-like development. Frequent is the cry within the aldermanic chambers: we don’t want to be like Brookline. Why not? It’s got a nice range of densities across its neighborhoods. Adding some more apartment buildings in Newton Centre would be a big jolt to the commercial district.
Second, we need to level the parking playing field. Big lots of free parking at Boylston Street malls, at Needham Street stores, anywhere in Newton, is bad public policy. Not only does free parking elsewhere create a competitive disadvantage for the businesses in the village centers we claim to cherish, it creates an automobile-centric ecosystem that is killing us on a number of fronts. (Free parking in the centers, by the way, is not the answer.) It’s going to take a long time, but we’ve take steps to limit the attractiveness of driving to shop. The collateral benefit is that walkable commercial districts, like our village centers, will become more attractive.
Third, we’ve got to figure out what it means to Newton and it’s village centers that the retail experience is losing its power to operate as a way of ordering our civic life. If we’re looking for a shared community experience, shopping isn’t going to play the role that it used to. I have been meaning to write about Chris Steele’s TAB op-ed on independent retailers and Newton villages (also published on the Newton Villages blog). In it, he pines for a time when friends and neighbors strolled the same sidewalks and browsed the same shops, which were independently run by wise experts, dispensing recommendations and practical how-to advice. Those days of strolling and browsing are gone. We’re meeting online, buying online, getting (better) recommendations and how-to advice online. If not, we’re jumping in the car for big-box deals.
The consequences are two-fold. Especially without a significant increase in density, Newton probably has too many village centers to support, much less revitalize. And, we need a new model. The one thing we can’t do online is grocery shop. (Okay, we can, but most don’t.) A small grocery store in each village would be a great anchor for a new model.
Fourth, we’ve got to invest in our village centers. Newton Centre is the supposed crown jewel of our villages, with Langley Street the prime stretch. The sidewalk is a disaster. Too narrow. No amenities. Scraggly street trees. It’s an embarrassment.
If we don’t take these four steps, any discussion about revitalizing our village centers is just lip service, any actions are token efforts.
I agree with you. And also I feel like I see a lot of action. I am mostly in Newtonville but I feel that Newtonville gets a lot of use. Granted we do have a supermarket and are near to Whole foods. But then again stores keep closing.
It’s def important and something that people want. Back in Dec I posted an ethical dilemma I had when I was camera shopping. I was obviously going to go to Newtonville Camera. However a friend sent a link to the same camera for $200 less on Amazon. I was honestly torn and posted it to Facebook and decided to let the masses discuss it. I assumed most people would call me crazy for questioning myself and send me to the deal at Amazon. However the very lengthy thread was comment after comment on why I should support the local shop. It was awesome and I no longer feel like someone with a big sucker stuck to my forehead. 200 bucks is not an insignificant amount of money but I decided to go to newtonville in support of my community, and have that $200 be a bit of charitable spending if you will. I ended up buying two cameras for the holiday. An affordable model for my 8 year old which promptly broke a few weeks ago ( computer spazzed) and I was glad I had a store to go to. They took it as it was under warrenty and sent it back and I just picked it up yesterday- I guess I COULD have sent it to Olympus directly but that would have been a hassle and this was nice and easy. Anyway- that’s a ramble to say- among the people I know- we want to shop on the street. And also everyone needs to be frugal. It’s hard. Oh and also- b/c of my post- at least two people also went into Newtonville and bought a camera for the holidays. So that is happening- we need it to happen more.
There is already a proven model for revitalization of neighborhood business areas.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation developed the Main Street Program which has great success across the country. It has four points:
1. Community Organization
2. Promotion
3. Design
4…Economic Restructuring.
The following exerpt from my website (www.brianyates.org) gives more details:
——————————————————————————–
Main Street—
The Proven Method of Revitalizing Neighborhood Business Districts
——————————————————————————–
A great deal of attention has been devoted to revitalizing village business districts in Newton, particularly Newton Centre and Newtonville. Though there has been much hard work on these projects and some good ideas have been generated, they have gotten off track by focusing on new development on underutilized parcels, rather than on fixing what’s there already.
There is a proven method to do this developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and its Main Street Center and successfully implemented across the country and with great success in the City of Boston. I have repeatedly urged the city to follow the MainStreet approach with its Four Points and Eight Principles.
The Four Points of Main Street are:
Community Organization
Promotion
Design
Economic Restructuring.
The Eight Principles of Main Street are:
Comprehensive
Incremental
Self-Help
Partnerships
Identifying and Capitalizing on Existing Assets
Quality
Change
Implementation
To learn more about these Points and Principles, visit the National Trust Main Street
Center http://www.preservationnation.org/main-street/ or the City of Boston
Main Street http://www.CityofBoston.gov/mainstreets
While I lived over in West Roxbury, Roslindale Square (now Roslindale Village) jumped into the “Main Street” approach with both feet and it paid enormous dividends. Rozzie Square in a few short years totally turned around and bloomed. Granted, the transformation also had some wind at its back with changing demographics but the Main Streets program was a hugely important part of that.
It’s interesting that MamaVee’s post above hit on the first two Main Street principles that Brian mentioned – Community Organization and Promotion.
Sorry I saw this post so late. I’m glad to see both Brian and Jerry endorse the Main Street Program approach as I know that both have a working relationship with its major principles. I also have two friends in Falls Church Virginia and Columbia South Carolina who have worked this into their community projects in Virginia and they can’t say enough about how effective the Program’s framework has been in developing measures that have broad support within the business and residential communities of their respective municipalities.