Has anyone noticed the difference between –
Building a new school in Waban/Newton Highlands – lets just call it Zervis – the city paid at least fair market value to take 3 homes so a parking lot could be built for teachers and staff – to meet the school’s needs but mainly so the teachers would not be parking on residential streets
and
Building a new school in Newtonville – we’ll call it Cabot – the city did not build a parking lot to meet the school’s needs so the teachers must park on residential streets?
Just wondering?
I thought we were in the process of banning cars for all uses? Plus taking land would reduce housing inventory…. Oh wait, we only want to restrict vehicle use for Newton residents.
Sorry too be so flippant… It just felt right today!
Marti:
Trust me, the Cabot community tried to fix this. The whole process made me insane. And the end result was that everyone lost. The Teachers. The students who now have to have pick up/drop off in across Cabot Park, the Park (which now has TWO PAVED PATHS BIFURCATING THE PARK).
The city was offering Parks/Rec improvements to the Park for a small piece of the park for a parking lot. I believe it would have also improved pick-off and drop off. The proposal went down in flaming defeat, and the scaremongering and denigration of the teachers for wanting to park close to the school was not fair.
You could also add in the extra delay to account for 3rd party folks trying to redesign the school at the last minute, the lack of money to provide attractive finishes to the outside of the gym and the new buildings, and the fact that Cabot had to keep its historic building but Angier did not. (for the record, I wasn’t upset about the last one, but many on the PTO were from my recollection).
I’m sure there are reasons for the differences, and I’m very thankful for a new school. But I think the way it was handled, and especially how the Ward 2 city councilors handled it, left a lot of people upset.
I’m sure this will be a big topic of conversation in the ward 2 races, both ward and at-large.
Btw, I do love the new school. I didn’t realize how much I had adjusted to the horrible conditions of the old Cabot as just the way it was. Completely eye-opening.
Fig,
Believe me, I know how mind numbing it was – including where the gym would go, how it was sited and parking. I was involved then. I live on Bridges Avenue – which, btw, has been changed to one way going toward the school. I love the new school too. The architects and others did a terrific job of incorporating the old building with the new.
I wish all developers’s architects would take notice of what blending the old with the new could be instead of just tearing things down and building all new.
Teachers were treated the same way when Zervis was built but those folks who didn’t want more parking lots and others lost because the neighborhood where Zervis is located wanted to keep teachers and staff from parking on their streets and this time the city listened to them.
Here, they park on the streets.
The city spent $100. million to build 2 elementary schools.
Just think with all that spent people had to foresake their homes
for staff parking and school bus turnabouts. Now children from the Horace Mann school district are redistricted to Cabot to fill the vacant classrooms. The school was over built to prepare for possible new students coming from who knows where.
The city is paying $5 million annually to house the buses and provide unsafe busing conditions. So far some children have waited over an hour for late arriving buses.
Does anyone agree with me that combining the tan brick facade of Cabot’s addition with the existing red brick of the existing school is crumby looking (sort of 50’s style add-on industrial), whereas matching or blending red brick on the addition to the existing would have made the school building far more attractive?
I agree with Jim. The renovated old school looks fabulous.
The new additions could have been designed to compliment the brick. The structure is humongous and overpriced for an elementary school. Newton officials have no restraint when building schools. Debt is of little concern. They believe tax payers
won’t object. However, for many there will be a limit to the high cost of owning in Newton.
Jim:
I like the glass connectors between old and new a lot. But yes, lots of folks commenting to me about how the new buildings look like 1950s concrete buildings. I’ve been told a few times that the additional costs to renovate the old building caused cost engineering and reductions in the outer material of the new buildings. The School is perfectly safe and sound and well constructed, but the outer look was definitely done on the cheap.
Like I’ve said before, it was a frustrating process.
(And look, we agree on something! 😉 )
What’s the old architect joke about hiding mistakes with ivy….
Fig, red masonry paint would do the trick! (Was the architect color blind for not blending the additions, or merely had bad taste?)
What an awful experience you all are living through. Being treated so poorly the City. I can scarcely imagine the angish.
One can only wonder if it is mere incompetence or something far more sinister. At least we can all rest assured that the V14 Sluths will uncover the truth! Thank goodness for the Internet.
C’mon Elmo. We’re all glad for the new school. But we can’t criticize anything about a large city project?
The Cabot process was a bit messy. If we don’t talk about it, how does it improve in future projects?
Also, V14 Sluths would be a great handle.
>V14 Sluths would be a great handle
…as long as it’s spelled “Sleuths.”
Ha! Good catch! I’m a horrible speller but should have seen that one for sure.
I like Sluth better.
>I like Sluth better
You might not if you looked up its description in the Urban Dictionary.
Why is parking on the street a bad thing? I believe they were looking at taking park land to turn into a parking lot at Cabot.
I agree that different areas of the City receiving different treatment is, unless the change can be explained as something other than more influential neighbors.
@fig, I agree there’s a double standard on how we use our public streets in different neighborhoods, though there are other strategic reasons why the city took those 3 lots at Zervas (I was initially opposed to the idea but later convinced it was worth doing) But why is it such a hardship that students arriving in private vehicles are dropped off across a field rather than driven right to the front door? They can’t walk to school even a tiny bit, safely through a park? With the level of car-dependency in Newton, traffic congestion and global warming, should we be designing our schools like drive-through fast food joints, or encouraging busing, walking and bicycling?