Tag Archives: Historic Canal District

Animal Issues, Green Island Grrrl, InCity Feature, InCity Letters, InCity Voices, Rosalie's Blog, Uncategorized

Tweet! Tweet! A little birdie told us Allen Fletcher recently bought this chunk of land in Kelley Square …

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.. for around a million bucks. You know the piece of land (pictured above) – it sorta juts out into Kelley Square. It’s the piece of no-man’s land on the corner of Water and Green streets. Mostly used for parking these days …

Should be interesting to see how Allen reinvents the property!

Allen works fast!

He’ll probably have workmen (and workwomen, we hope!) at the site by next year, digging and bulldozing away!

I say HOORAY!

Here’s Allen’s chance to shine! Come through for people who aren’t the latte-drinking, beer-guzzling or narcissistic poseurs who seem to have taken over my old (and present) hood! So fake! So phony! Most have a talent for nothing  … except blatant self-promotion! It’s manipulative … not real. Just public relations. No one is anyone’s friend in the true, warts-and-all sense. Such garbage!

GET REAL, ALLEN!!!!!!

Get back to our roots!

Build up the neighborhood by creating a building/complex/NEW world to draw in:

Children/youth. They could use a branch library or an after-school center in your new space!

The families in the area, many without cars or a lot of dough. They could use a community health center in your new building. A YMCA branch, perhaps?

A CVS would be terrific! We need a pharmacy in the hood!

We need a bank branch, too!

A supermarket or TRADER JOE’S open SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, with normal working person’s hours and AFFORDABLE stuff and amenable to WIC, SNAP cards and the folks who have them (cuz they are poor) IS DESPERATELY NEEDED here!  Has been for YEARS!

If you put in housing, besides the retail, PLEASE make 30% of it affordable! 

MAKE THE NEIGHBORHOOD TRULY DIVERSE AND LIVELY, Allen! Make it more than a haven for preppy young or want-to-be-young bar flies.

Create a vibrant day scene, by putting in families and kids and the more mundane stuff that keeps them doing stuff … create a neighborhood that HUMS during the day!!

You’re a good guy who doesn’t want to exclude folks, a guy who doesn’t want to see the neighborhood become a one-trick pony (barsville). That’s BORING! And you pride yourself on reinvention and risk! PERSONAL GROWTH.

Good luck in your new endeavor! and … DO THE RIGHT THINGS!

– Rosalie!

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog, Uncategorized

The Wyman-Gordon site is a sight!

By Rosalie Tirella

The old Wyman Gordon factory site. Once a testament to Worcester’s industrial muscle. Now a shadow of it and its city’s former, greater!, working-class self! Now it is ugly, dirty, closed off from the neighborhood – no longer economic life blood for the residents of the hood. It sits at the edge of the Canal District under-used, under-loved. You drive past it down Lamartine Street and your heart grows heavy …

Through the years, there have been plans and dreams for this Woo inner-city eyesore – some more mundane than others. Like the Wal-Mart that was maybe gonna go in (nope, said the company, not enough potential customers), a Price Chopper (ditto for the supermarket chain), etc.

The summer before last it really looked like a slots casino, hotel, spa, pub-style restaurant were all heading for the Wyman Gordon site. But then-City Manager Mike O’Brien and pals pushed for the hotel to be built downtown,  restaurant types felt uneasy about the casino’s pub taking business away, other folks wanted MILLIONS AND MILILIONS of dollars in mitigation funds – bribes, don’t you know. So Worcester, as usual, shot itself in the groin.

I myself was against the whole thing! But I reconsidered once neighborhood folks told me LOUD AND CLEAR that THEY REALLY WANTED – NEEDED! – ALL THE JOBS that the casino was going to create.

In hindsight, the classy, fun playground, with a concert venue!, that the casino guys proposed might have been a good thing. I know this for sure: All the jobs for the semi-skilled in the neighborhood and city would have been a GREAT THING!

Just getting some trees planted along Lamartine Street – this gal’s modest proposal for the WG site two summers ago! – proved to be too controversial!

So now we’ve got shit! The Wyman Gordon site is one big shit sandwich on Kelley Square, leading to the Historic Canal District.

Maybe it’s all the Halloween candy I wolfed down doing the talkin’ … but the Wyman Gordon site looks especially foreboding this time of year!

But today I have a new, INEXPENSIVE, INCLUSIVE, DOABLE, TEMPORARY SOLUTION to the problem:  an inner-city mini-park, with or without a dog park.

Let’s all work together to get some soil trucked into this now fairly cleaned up and detoxified brownfield! Let’s put in trees, bushes, flower gardens, benches, picnic tables, some art …

If the liability issue can get worked out, let’s fence in some greenery, bolt in some fuckin’ benches, install doggy poop bags dispensing machines and get a little urban dog park going! It may work! It would be away from tons of homes with homeowners who don’t want to live by a dog park. Away from all the anal naysayers who will NEVER allow a dog park to be constructed in Green Hill Park. (Let’s not kid ourselves!)

If Allen Fletcher can have his fake canal, the Canal District should – through volunteerism? and donations? – create a fake city park that can be disassembled once the Wyman Gordon folks sell the property, which will never happen because the owners  are demanding WAY TOO MUCH $$$$.

We’ve got stabbings, prostitution, murders, garbage dumping in/near the historic Canal District.  Maybe if the hood’s RESIDENTS get something they can truly feel part of, make their own, there would be more pride in the neighborhood coming from people who live here 24/7.

The real neighborhood.

The real neighborhood people who need a CVS, bank, supermarket, maybe even a health center or public library branch, in their neighborhood. The very  stuff the neighborhood’ s movers and shakers all have and take for granted.

Now that would be historic!

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog, Uncategorized

All over Green Island yesterday, on Millbury Street, Worcester police cruisers, state-ies, drug-/criminal-sniffing German Shepherds …

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By Rosalie Tirella

… Oh, my! I said to myself as I drove through the hood yesterday afternoon, running my biz!! So pretty out! So sunny out! Perfect day for a man hunt! Or a huge huge heroin bust!

There they were, three cops, on foot patrol, being led by a single minded German Shepherd dog who was pulling them into all the doorways of all the establishments on Millbury Street. Then the Worcester police cruisers with lights flashing (sirens off), then the state police cruisers with their lights on (also silent) filled the scene.

This city girl said: COOL! I wanna tag along!

In my car, driving slowly, gunking up traffic, I thought: This must be big! Maybe I’m in the middle of a search for a killer or drug-lord or just plain ol’ drugs! I stupidly followed the cops who were working diligently, with their dog. And I caught their adrenaline rush!

Cops may not wanna admit this but they must love the high of the chase, the adrenaline rush! On the edge! You have to think FAST! Very Steve McQueen! Some of their coolness rubbed off on me cuz I got fearless and giddy and felt EXCITED. The officers – two men in their 30s and a woman in her 30s – showed not a smidgen of fear. They smiled as they walked the hood with their lanky dog, and when a car tooted at them (not me!) the gal copper yelled at him: NOW THAT HELPS! Then she looked at her colleagues and smiled. She was beautiful and full of  herself! I like to see fearlessness in women doing dangerous jobs! I hope she is or becomes a mom and raises FEARLESS DAUGHTERS!

The German Shepherd dog had a mind of its own and led the police officers, all crisp and buff, up Endicott Street. I followed along in my jalopy, trying to snap photos.

Then they made a right onto Ward Street, their dog straining, putting his nose into people’s yards and then, as if thinking NOPE!,  moving on to the next property.

I called out to them! You have a beautiful working dog! Here’s mine – Jett! Jett was bounding up and down in the back seat, eager to jump out and play with the working dog, who didn’t even know we were there. HE WAS WORKING THAT HARD. One of the cops, nice enough, but with a smug little smile on his face, said: Ma’am, the dog is working right now!

I said, I know! Then I said who I was and told them I was snapping a few photos for the website and paper.  The cops, youngish and cocky, the queenie and her kings of the hood – until some punk maybe decided to shoot at them (or me!) from a window (everyone and his/her brother seems to own a gun in Worcester!) – looked at each other and grinned. I smiled back.

Spring in the city!