During a Saturday bike ride I happened upon the the parklet in the center of Lexington right out front of Ride Studio Cafe. It’s a small plot, just two parking spaces long, but does encourage some great interaction and is in its third summer. A mom of 3 sat there with her toddler and twin infants talking with passersby, another foursome sat drinking coffee deep in discussion, and a few cyclists parked and walked into surrounding stores.
Last month my wife and I were in the small vacation town of Magog, Quebec and saw much the same phenomenon. Parklets, taking up a parking spot or two, acted as outdoor seating for nearby restaurants. Not only did this extend their business potential, but it also added to the streetscape.
These aren’t perfect by any means. In fact, attempts at parklets have failed in parts of Boston even as they’ve succeeded elsewhere. But when I walk through places like Newton Centre, Newtonville, West Newton and Newton Highlands, I can’t help but think that we can greatly enhance the quality of pedestrian life with some life on the street.
What’s to stop us from implementing this program? I have to imagine that some businesses would like the additional seating a parklet could bring in exchange for the cost of a single parking space.
I agree that this could be a great addition to the Highlands, especially once the new restaurants open on Lincoln St. Even without taking up parking spaces – the raised area outside the shops near the intersection of Lincoln and Walnut could be turned into a more inviting area with a canopy and a little greenery.
A great idea but I disagree that it’s needed in the Highlands. The Highlands has Rodney Barker Square (in front of Bread & Chocolate), Office English Garden (on the corner of Lincoln & Walnut, on the Inguldge! side) and more outdoor benches along the wide sidewalk on across the Street. Come to think if it, no wonder, people love the Highlands! It’s filled with parklets!
I’ve been advocating for this for a long time. The cafe/restaurant pays a small fee to the city, the city provides the parklet, the restaurant provides the chairs. I thought Rox Diner would be perfect, as would Brewer’s Coalition and Cook. The city should be looking for ways to activate the sidewalks and streets…
And for the City Planners, a parklet does not mean a few potted plants and roped off area. Saw that a few years back in Newton Centre. C’mon now.
Love the Parklet idea. Summer traffic and parking is much lighter, we should take advantage of the space, pace and weather. How about a couple of spaces in front of O’Hara’s? Waban Starbucks? Bocabella’s?
Why not cafe tables and umbrellas at the beautiful Newton Highland flower garden? BYOB.
Indeed, Rodney Barker Square is a permanent parklet of sorts, going back to the 80’s, I think. Walnut Street, however, doesn’t have that same cozy feel. A parklet might be nice in front of O’Hara’s. @fignewtonville, not only would parklets be perfect for the restaurants you mention in Newtonville, there’s an excess of asphalt which could give way to widen the sidewalks someday.
I think a permanent parklet along Austin Street between the parking lot and Starbucks along Bram Way would be a great asset. Maybe do something with that ugly old parking lot too. Hey, why not put building over the lot and get the developer to pay for the parklet? Win-win-win!
I think parklets are great. The ones I have seen are popular and aren’t even in front of a restaurant. It’s a nice place to sit for a while. I think Walnut Street in Newtonville would be a good place to have one or two. Already people use the tables in front of Los Amigos and the tiny spaces in front of Rox Diner and the coffee shop, even in front of the senior center.
I also love the idea of parklets…but I remember hearing that the seating spaces in front of the deceased Rox Café were not there legally. It seems that there are ADA regulations that must be met to allow for outdoor tables, benches and mingling spots. For one thing, they must allow wheel chairs to pass safely by the tables on the sidewalk without endangering wheel chair users by forcing them to be too close to the street. Bump-outs could be the perfect solution!
@Sallee, the idea is to use street parking spaces and be off the sidewalk so the problem you are recalling is not an issue. I think some of the Newton bike groups have tried this in the past for single day pop-up parklets.
Sounds like a fun adventure to try! Groot, wouldn’t that be a permanent bump-out, or would these parklets just be temporary “pop-up” areas?
Yes, there was a parklet in front of the Newton Centre JP Licks a few summers ago. But if I remember correctly, the neighboring merchants weren’t happy about losing the parking spaces, which may explain why the experiment wasn’t repeated. And it always made me nervous to see little kids sugar-charged on ice cream scampering around inches from passing traffic. I thought at the time that a better spot would be the nearby eastern end of the triangle parking lot, where cars would be moving much more slowly and drivers would have the people right in front of them as they approached rather than, at best, in their peripheral vision. But now that I understand the financial quid pro quo behind the idea, I can see why the city’s own parking lot wasn’t tapped as a location.
I was thinking of a permanent parklet like the one in the photo. It could be surrounded with a low wrought iron fence like the one at the senior center in addition to the planters to protect kids near the street. The brick sidewalk is a nice touch too.
I don’t think the one in front of JP Lick was a parklet in the same way, but instead a bit of bike parking. Something like that is still there.
How do we move this forward so we have it for next summer? Maybe some pilot locations in places like Newtonville, West Newton and Newton Centre?
@Chuck, I am not sure how this would affect merchants that have parking requirements to meet when asking to establish limits on customers. I imagine that removing one or two spots per village center may be palatable but I would start by picking a street and working with the local businesses to get their input. From what Amanda recalls it would be good to start with the merchants on board and working to help make the change 🙂
@Marti, movable planters would be nice to mark off the space and allow for these parklets to be seasonal. We have seen nice cooperation with the businesses in the Highlands watering and maintaining the village flower pots along Lincoln street.
Below is a link to a description of the first Newton gonzo bike corral. Not quite a parklet, but we learned that opening up some car storage space for people creates instant vibrancy and vitality. There was a buzz to JP Licks that day. The JP Licks management loved it. I’m convinced this will be good for the businesses that are bold enough to envision the benefits of outdoor public space not just for car storage but for people.
http://newtonstreets.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-street-bike-parking-in-newton.html
What’s possible (when you free your inner college student self):
http://bubikes.bostonbiker.org/2009/09/20/bu-parking-2009-day-a-success/
http://bubikes.bostonbiker.org/2009/09/22/more-parking-day-photos/
As Amanda mentioned the parklets cost valuable parking spaces that the city keeps mandating for increasing restaurant expansion. ( And also granting variances for the diminishment of ). Let’s face it folks this ain’t Paris or Rome,.. get real. This is suburban Boston , the Garden City with drive up able village centers ( except soon for Newtonville when Austin Street gets approved ). Our ‘Villages’ are under threat to urbanization and this is just one more manifestation.
@blueprintbill
I think you’ve got that backwards Bill. Pedestrians interacting in front of businesses in the village center is the epitome of village life – villagification. You’Re talking about something quite different – suburbaniztion. We’ve got plenty of that already (Rt 9, Needham St) but that car-centric vision should definitely not be our ideal for village centers or we,will destroy them.
@Jerry has it right @blueprintbill. The places I’ve seen that have implemented this with success aren’t the big cities but the smaller villages. Both Lexington and Magog fit into this category. Magog’s main drag is very much like Newtonville or West Newton. It has a single main road with restaurants and shops, a few shooting off of it and municipal parking lot nearby. Lexington has the same.
Groot, how about weighted or somehow convertible planters that are beside each other creating a safe place for children?
As to the “city’s own parking lots,” see Greg’s post.
I don’t agree with the argument that parklets and gonzo bike corrals are bad for local businesses. They create places that are inviting and draw customers to village centers instead of to shopping centers with huge parking lots, which is certainly an option in Newton. I do agree that working with the “bold” local businesses to find the right places is an important aspect.
For those who say they want to maintain the village feel, in Newtonville particularly but others too, these should be right down your alley. Almost all actual villages have gathering places. So to argue that they take up valuable parking space causing them to be detrimental to “the Garden City with drive up able village centers,” seems contradictory. These would help bring back some of the village feel.
In Newtonville, Walnut Street has become a major “drive through” street. It wasn’t even 5 years ago when it was easy to park in front of a store and run errands. There were fewer cars, they were moving slower and their drivers were cautious and made eye contact with pedestrians and bikers. A car slowing with its blinker on registered quickly with the driver behind it who showed no animosity and kindly waited for the car to park. Since then, all of those variables have changed. The drivers are just trying to get through the center as fast as possible to move on towards their destination, which isn’t Newtonville Center.
Pedestrians and bikers are rarely given eye contact, (many times, eye contact is relegated to angry looks) so crossing is much more dangerous, even though another cross walk has been added. The sidewalks are barely wide enough for walking both ways so stopping to chat with a friend, in a friendly village way, is next to impossible.
Cars are close together, moving quickly so it’s necessary for cars to start slowing down way before the parking space with the blinker on to be able to stop to park. Even then many times the drivers behind don’t recognize that the car is planning to park so they pull up right behind and cars going both ways have to wait for them to go around before the car can park or give up, along with horns blowing and angry gestures causing more people to park in the lot anyway.
Anything that slows these cars down would be helpful and hopefully would create a desire to travel a different route just to get from one place to another.
@Marti, I think we are thinking about the same type of barrier to define and protect the folks within the parklet, forming seasonal spaces. Some of the ideas I have heard about bump-outs on Walnut St. in Newtonville could increase gathering spaces and act as traffic calming, space for permanent parklets.
One point I would like to make is we need a balance between the various stakeholders. For instance if we take parking away from customers we need to reduce some of the parking requirements placed on merchants. I believe that merchants would value village improvements that drew people to the village and allowed to congregate for longer periods.
At Jerry and Chuck,
Ok let’s widen sidewalks , give up a few parking spaces, make parklets, etc. and presuming we don’t kill off a few businesses in the process we will have to provide parking off street as Chuck suggested. Great idea,.. And for starters let’s kill off the parking limiting Austin Street project ( an urbanizing element ) and get on with villagification !
It’s great to be coming to agreement.
This is a great way to make the villages more walkable and I think Newton could avoid a couple of the mistakes that Boston made when unveiling them, which led to an underwhelming first impression:
(1) Locate near well-trafficked cafes that tend to have wait lines, (like Rox Diner in Newtonville.)
(2) Make the benches inviting – some of those in Boston were excessively sleek and seemed to prize form over function.
(3) Provide for lighting at night and even a useful amenity like to-go dog bags or cell phone chargers.
If you’re wondering how a Parklet could possibly have self-contained lighting and cell phone chargers, check out the Soofa bench, which are solar-powered urban furniture (www.soofa.co). Cambridge already has them.
Walkable, bikeable village centers are not only good for business, they stimulate new business and vibrancy. Here’s an example from Hudson, just off the Assabet River Rail Trail:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2015/07/21/they-put-hudson-culinary-map/7k3kn9L8VvlCtTF2PwWv0J/story.html
Bill’s reference to Austin Street is a reflection of how much the opposition to that development is fundamentally about defending car culture.
I agree Nathan and yet I’m also puzzled, given that the project preserves 100 percent of the public parking spaces.
Greg, I won’t claim to understand all of it, but there is an element of car culture that is offended by the notion that new residents wouldn’t choose to own cars. In that mindset, an additional person represents an additional car, which requires an additional parking space. So in this view, parking can grow to absorb more people-cars, but traffic congestion will still grow. In car culture, not only isn’t there viable transit oriented development; the fact that there isn’t means there cannot be.
Are we still talking about parking for Austin Street? What is it now, the construction period? The extra spaces for the high school? The few times a year where the Yoga Studio has a master class? Gosh, some folks might have to walk THE EXACT SAME DISTANCE ACROSS THE BRIDGE….
Look, every idea is going to have a detractor. Parklets take away parking. But they bring folks to the area, encourage them to gather. If we gather, I’m far more likely to window shop, get some ice cream, stop by Diva, stop and look at the shoes, get a loaf of bread, etc.
Many of the folks who comment here about Newtonville aren’t local to the village or the surrounding areas. But they like having “easy” parking for Yoga, CVS, Shaws, etc. I’m sure the business folks like easy parking too. But as a long term Newtonville resident, I want my village to be more than just an errand stop. Newton Centre has that. Newton Highlands has that. Nonantum has that.
Why don’t we give the parklet idea a try? Many cities are inventive, innovative. Newton seems to debate itself to death.
I would encourage the area counsel to give this a try. And I would encourage our leaders to actually take a stand and see something through. Geez, this community can be frustrating.