Tag Archives: urban renewal

Grant Park: ribbon cutting at last!

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Late summer bloomers… pic:R.T.

By Edith Morgan

It was touch and go for a little while on Saturday, August 6th: the skies opened up and a sudden shower soaked us as we loaded things into the car at 10 a.m. to take to the picnic at Grant Park. We DID have a rain date set up for Sunday, but a quick phone call to Wini, the moving spirit and co-chair of the Green Hill Neighborhood Association, with Deb Bolz, assured me that the event would go on as planned. And sure enough, the sky cleared, and we proceeded!

This was a long-awaited event, and even though there are still a few pieces missing in the park’s improvements, it was really time to celebrate how far we had come, and how much was already accomplished.

So, at noon, a ribbon-cutting ceremony took place – with a large number of Worcester officials and elected officials participating. Our mayor Joe Petty, City Manager Ed Augustus, our District Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson, our previous longtime councilor Phil Palmieri, School Committee member John Monfredo, Councilor Kate Toomey, State Representative Mary
Keefe, State Senator Harriette Chandler, newly appointed Worcester Police Chief Steve Sargent – and Lt. Governor Karen Polito – (did I omit anyone?) all came to help cut the ribbon and say a few words to the assembled neighbors.

Several of them said: When Wini calls, everyone comes!

And therein lies a story: Although Wini has not lived here all her life, in the time she has been here, she has been an unyielding champion for, and advocate, for her neighborhood, its children and its inhabitants. Noting that there was a great concentration of social service agencies, Wini and Deb invited them to participate in our neighborhood and help in its improvement – and help they did!

Grant Park was for many years just a weed-infested block, with a basketball court at one end, often strewn with litter and drug paraphernalia, pretty much neglected and uncared for.

But Wini, owning a home right across the street from this park, was determined that this park should become a jewel in the area: playground equipment, fencing, retaining walls, benches – all sorts of amenities needed to make this park a gathering place for all ages in this community.

The Regional Environmental Council created garden plots there, and money was appropriated while Phil Palmieri was our city councilor. With constant pressure from Wini and her neighbors, finally a state-of-the art park was created. And this summer it was one of the sites for the city’s summer recreation program, RECREATION WORCESTER.

After the ribbon cutting, the picnic began in earnest: hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, soda, water and various hot dishes and salads as well as Table Talk pies for everyone were in plentiful supply – and lots of volunteers from the area, who passed out food and drinks, set up tables and chairs, and kept everything clean and tidy.

Around the periphery, tables set up by Lt. Annie of the police department, as well as Niko from the election commission giving out voter information, the USDA booth about the Asian longhorned beetle, and other displays to inform neighbors were there.

And for the younger children, Annie Parsnips, the clown, made balloon animals and with the able assistance of neighborhood residents, painted faces.

There is still work to be done at Grant Park, and perhaps by next August, we can celebrate the installation of the lights.

Our thanks to all who contributed, who helped, who attended – who supplied food and music (I am remiss in not having gotten the name of our disc jockey!!). And most of all, thanks to Winifred – Wini – Octave and Debra Bolz, without whose persistence and belief in the goodness of our neighborhood all this would not have been accomplished!

Today! Check out the murals across from the main WP Library, Salem Sq!

Check out your downtown! SO EXCITING!!!!
pics+text:Rosalie Tirella

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WP Library school branch hours:

Worcester Public Library – One City, One Library Branches

Public Hours for 2016-2017 School Year

The Worcester Public Library’s One City, One Library Branches will have updated hours for the 2016-2017 school year:

The Burncoat Branch, located at 526 Burncoat Street, Worcester, will be open Tuesday through Friday from 4 to 6:30 p.m., and on Saturday from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.

The Goddard Branch, located at 14 Richards Street, Worcester, will be open Monday through Friday from 3 to 6:30 p.m., and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

The Roosevelt Branch, located at 1006 Grafton Street, Worcester, will be open Tuesday through Friday from 3 to 6:30 p.m., and on Saturday from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.

The Tatnuck Magnet Branch, located at 1083 Pleasant Street, Worcester, will be open Monday through Friday from 3 to 6:30 p.m., and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

All One City, One Library Branches will be closed on Sundays. Library hours are subject to change during holiday/vacation periods, please check www.mywpl.org for changes.

For more information about the Worcester Public Library or the One City, One Library branch hours please visit www.mywpl.org or call the Main Library at 508-799-1655.

3 Salem Square, Worcester, MA 01608

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First day of school! Mom and son across the street, heading home, after a school day at the QUINSIGAMOND VILLAGE COMMUNITY SCHOOL!

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The future! Downtown Worcester mural! CHECK ALL OF THE ART OUT TODAY!!!

From the WP Library:

The Worcester Public Library has been offering World Language Storytimes in Vietnamese and Portuguese for the past two years thanks to a grant from the Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA).

The LSTA is the only federal program exclusively for libraries, and is administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The World Languages Storytimes began in October 2014.

This two-year project made it possible for children and families who don’t frequent the Worcester Public Library to be exposed to the Library and its services while attending storytimes in their own language. (Vietnamese and Portuguese).

It also allowed this new audience to engage in other cultural and educational events offered at the Library.

Community members were invited to participate as presenters conducted storytimes in their native language, with the help of a Children’s Librarian.

A dozen patrons and Youth Services staff participated in an all-day training session.

The grant helped develop and increase the World Languages area, adding books, videos, music, posters and decorations, children’s musical instruments, and storytime supplies.

In February, the Library hosted a Chinese New Year and Kung Fu Demonstration by Leaders Way Kung Fu Academy in Worcester, with a traditional Lion Dance, and in April a Brazilian Cultural Stories and sing-along was offered.

The Librarians involved worked to build a solid foundation to continue the world languages storytimes program for the future. “It is important to be inclusive in offering these and all types of services to children and families,” said Iris Delgado, Youth Services Manager. “This grant gave us the opportunity to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Library and these communities. While attending World Language Storytimes they have become aware of the Library’s rich services, and we have learned through the presenters and participants the value of their communities to our library.”

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GOOD STUFF! City of Worcester should host a fair like this one!

Mayor Stephen DiNatale and the City of Fitchburg Community Development Department invite you to the Fitchburg School Community Coalition

COMMUNITY RESOURCE FAIR! FREE!

DATE: Thursday, September 15

TIME: 4 pm – 7 pm

PLACE: 14 Wallace Ave, Fitchburg

Come and learn about the services offered by Fitchburg City Departments and area agencies including:

housing and shelter assistance;

elder care;

food resources;

energy and fuel assistance;

health and wellness;

support groups;

child care;

domestic violence;

substance abuse information;

cultural offerings, veterans services –
and many more!

FREE

Fresh produce will be available for purchase

DOOR RAFFLES!

Free snacks will be provided by Sodexo

PRIZES!

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Love this mural in our theater district!!!!

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Today! Yay! … and flower power!

Farmers Market 1-1-2

Go, REC FARMERS MARKET, GO!!!!

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At Crystal Park (aka University Park) 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

REC farmers markets – the most diverse farmers markets in the city!

SNAP/EBT Cards, WIC, Senior coupons accepted at all REC FARMERS MARKETS!

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photo:REC

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And … FREE YOGA ON THE WORCESTER COMMON …

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And … Worcester, we are doing it! Revitalizing our downtown!

Why, just look at the pretty grounds of the Mercantile Center (the old Worcester Galleria)! Yesterday, I saw flowers galore outside their building, across the street from City Hall. And their flowers cascaded, sprouted and bloomed all through our downtown, all the way to St. Vincent’s. Lovely!

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The DCU Center could learn a few things from their across-the-way neighbor! The sparsely planted DCU trees don’t soften their big, harsh building. Don’t make it look inviting! And where are all the colors! No pretty flowers!!! Damn!!!!

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Pics/text:R.T.

Rose parked in A.I. … Out and about today … impressed with Hudson’s …

… and Marlboro’s downtowns.

Flowers, flags, adorable small businesses, smooth street, crisply painted yellow crosswalks, cones in the crosswalks reminding drivers to SLOW DOWN (pedestrian-embracing), flower beds everywhere, public art, SUPER CLEAN (no dumped garbage!) … steal these ideas, Worcester Downtown boosters! Make our Main Street sparkle!

P.S. Years ago I worked in Marlboro part-time – and drove through Hudson often. Kinda dumpy. These burgs have really come along way, blossomed with biz. However, I’ve got to say: Marlboro looks over-developed. Too many chain everything! I miss all the open green space there … It’s like Marlboro planners are developer-whores: They say YES to every Applebees, Walgreens, tire joint and strip mall! Way too much!

text/pics: Rosalie Tirella

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Worcester missed an opportunity by dismissing Juan Gomez’s vision!

By Rosalie Tirella

Some Worcester projects just drag on and on and on.
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For example: The Wyman Gordon site, at Green Island’s Lamartine Street. Now a brown field, it was once a thriving factory and serious economic booster for Green Islanders. Today it lies empty, ugly and toxic.

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… or Piedmont’s Chandler Elementary School. The families there need a larger school building to accommodate the hundereds of kids that the city educates there. A good chunk of the student body is being bussed daily to other learning sites in the city. On a smaller scale, up until very recently, its trashed back doors and side windows needed replacing … (pics:R.T.)

These projects in our urban core just never seem to get off the ground. Like the perennial lead balloon, these inner-city sites – a reflection of Worcester political leaders’ lack of commitment to poorer/minority neighborhoods and poor/minority folks (usually people with little political clout ) –  just keep rolling along Lamartine Street, Murray Ave or Chandler Street. Every election cycle our politicians ever so elegantly dance over these lead balloons: Yes! they say, we feel your pain! (they absolutely do NOT!). Yes! we know half of Chandler Elementary school’s student body is being bussed out to other city buildings to learn because the building is so over populated! (How many West Side parents would put up with that kind of  school-day disruption for their precious kiddies?!) Yes! We know the school’s back doors are wooden and rotten and look like some one’s trying to kick them in and the wood windows are damaged badly, but, hey, we’re working on it! (finally – yes –  the school’s doors were recently replaced with heavy green metal ones and the damaged heavy wooden windows replaced with new ones – see photo, above)

Here is our latest urban core lead balloon over which the city is self-flagellating but not moving on – even though a BEAUTIFUL USE for it was recently presented to the City Manager and Co. by former Worcester City Councilor Juan Gomez :

It’s the old PIP building in Main South – and the LATINO ARTS/PERFORMANCE CENTER  it could have become!

Formerly one of the state’s  two or three only “wet” shelters (drunk,  high, stoned homeless welcome here!) residents and  small businesses in Main South and city leaders (most notably former District 4 City Councilor Barbara Haller) clamored for years for the PIP to be shut down. The drug users were shooting up heroin a few streets outside the PIP’s doors and then staggering into the social service agency for supper, medical care and a cot to sleep in for the night . Morning came and they walked out into the Main South neighborhood, some on their way to getting clean and sober, but most looking to get high all over again and repeat the brutal cycle. Usually just yards away from the PIP’s back doors! Nearby Main South small biz folks were outraged, lower Main South residents fearful and without hope. 

Then a few years ago, the unimaginable happened: Thanks mostly to Haller and Main South community activist Billy Breault, the PIP was FINALLY shut down. Homeless addicts and hardcore alcoholics are now being helped in other places in the city – social service agencies that refuse them if they are high and transport them to hospitals for detoxification; places/half way homes with more security; social service agencies with impressive, structured programs.

So now the old PIP building has become another Woo lead balloon!

For their/your information: the  PIP building ITSELF is STILL attracting junkies, staggering alcoholics and high homeless folks!  Scrawny, weather beaten women are STILL TODAY walking the walk outside its doors, along Charlton Street, looking to sell their bodies to buy a bag of cheap smack from the heroin dearler who himself is usually just a few yards away. The tired and high but hopeless STILL sit on the curb stones by the PIP nodding off, heads in their hands, rocking to and fro, murmuring to themselves. So sad…They are still breaking into nearby vehicles to “sleep it off” or look for money in glove compartments to buy drugs. Guns are still being fired.

The PIP building is STILL an affront to the hardwordking small business folks who are trying to make a living and create jobs! It’s STILL a late night, cacophony-filled nightmare for Main South residents trying to hold down jobs and raise their families right!

Enter the adorable, strong-willled, smart-as-the-bow-ties-he-wears  Juan Gomez, executive director of Centro on nearby Sycamore Street – just two streets down. Gomez, a former Worcester City Councilor and a recent city councilor candidate, has been head of the city’s premier Latino social sevice agency for several years now. And he’s run with it! Programs for the Hispanic elderly, hungry and displaced have expanded! Their outreach to the Worcester Hispanic population grows stronger by the day. Education, art, small biz … Juan is trying to support it all! Do it all!  The  yearly summertime and terrific Latino Music Festival, put on in large part through support from Centro, is another jewel in Worcester’s cultural crown. In other words, Centro, which has been around for years, is UP AND COMING !, thanks in no small part to the little power house and biz-savvy, Republican, feet-on-the-ground-but-not-afraid-to-dream Juan Gomez, himself a second generation American and a profile in courage as a cancer survivor.

So I cheered when Centro purchased a few pieces of tired property, really a good bit of Sycamore Street, next to and across the street from Centro. For additional office space and parking, Juan says. Needed because their expanded services and mission needs more space in a very densely populated inner city neighborhood.

Here’s the most intriguing/best part…Centro, through Juan, planned on buying the PIP building to create a Latino Arts Center/Community Space open to ALL. It would have showcased the arts/culture and artists of Puerto Rico and Central America.  Worcester folks with roots from those countries and territory would be able to enjoy a beautiful slice of their or their parents/grandparents homelands. THEIR ROOTS. THEIR HERITAGE. A POSITIVE PICTURE. There were plans for  a performance space with a stage for dancers, musicians, singers, poets. There would have been classrooms for artist workshops and community art or music classes. All with an eye on nurturing and promoting Latino art and artists!

TERRIFIC! I thought to myself. What a wonderful addition to the Worcester Family! To a CITY that SAYS it embraces racial and economic DIVERSITY as manifested through its population!

Juan applied to the City of Worcester for a $100,000+  community block grant to help buy the PIP building. The City Manager’s office said NO, NOPE, no thanks. Not interested in supporting this arts center. The grant money went to other Worcester social service agencies – all doing fine work but nothing as WONDERFUL and INSPIRED/INSPIRING as what this Latino Arts building would have meant to our Latino/ minority community, ALL WORCESTERITES and DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION.

The PIP is a big, multi-storied building that is in EXCELLENT shape (I toured it a few years ago). It would have made a great arts center. It has a big commercial kitchen, many bathrooms, meeting rooms and a big open first floor space. Perfect!

Yet city leaders, who claim to be urban visionaries, couldn’t “see” the brilliance and beauty of Juan Gomez’s vision. For his people. For downtown. For all of Worcester County, really.

So often the Latinos that make the news – and shape our collective vision of their culture – are in the stories about Latinos in Worcester riding illegal dirt bikes, getting arrested for drug dealing, getting stabbed over that, shot over this. THE FEW BAD SEEDS. (I’ve always been amazed that grinding poverty and prejudice haven’t made more people angry killers!) Wouldn’t it be great to read, daily, about the good and amazing in Latino culture? The famous Latino guitarist visiting the CENTRO ARTS CENTRE or those wonderful Salsa dancers who performed over in Main South at the CENTRO ARTS CENTRE … or the city kids who are discovering a famous Hispanic painter in the summer art class they’re taking at the CENTRO ARTS CENTRE?

That is how you cure white people of racial prejudice!

Present a different – the TRUE –  PICTURE of a culture to them!

Keep doing this every day…and prejudices will begin to melt away. Work to have people, white, brown, black, poor, rich interact with each other every day – meet in celebratory, educational places to see WHO THEY REALLY ARE.

That is how we break down barriers and make society more equitable, freer…

The CENTRO ARTS center would have been a BOON for all of us! Instead the city manager and city staff and city political leaders shut their eyes and missed an opportunity with the PIP building! Which is really nutty and pathetic, besides being horribly short-sighted, because they often talk about  how there is little racism in Worcester or how seriously they take racial inequity. That’s a lie. They don’t know any better. Yet they need to!

If anything, out of self interest:

Main South is only a block or two away from our planned BRIGHT NEW SHINY DOWNTOWN! City Manager Ed Augustus wants a BEAUTIFUL and BUSTLING downtown Worcester to be his legacy. He’s got an urban renewal game plan and making it happen. It’s a shame he can’t walk just two blocks up from his beloved downtown and his office in City Hall to see all the horrible shit STILL GOING DOWN IN FRONT OF AND ON THE SIDE of the PIP building . The junkies STILL passed out in front of the PIP are just the beginning…

Now, I ask you,  how can we create a downtown Worcester that WILL DRAW MILLENIALS AND THE UPWARDLY MOBILE AND THE MIDDLE CLASS EMPTY NESTERS if, on their way to a show at the Hanover or a road race that starts at City Hall  or a visit to a cool, urbane downtown restaurant for martinis and sushi, they see some guy pretend butt fucking some gal outside the PIP building, like I have? Or several more lost souls sitting on the curb or overturned gray plastic milk crates picked out of Dumpsters waiting for their man so they can shoot up and get high?

What will this little gritty scene say about  the new and trendy Worcester to people who will, in some cases, be driving by the PIP?!

Can you dig it?!

We can!

The City  of Worcester movers and shakers can’t.

Why?

No need to plumb city leaders’ psyches for a deep answer…But let’s just say the city is run by a bunch of unforgiving vindictive shit heads who never forget a slight or a misstatement or a move that was not in sync with their political plans and have no trouble turning the lone riders  the lone visionaries into PERSON NON GRATA.   Crap. Juan Gomez, as a Worcester city councilor, was always his own man. But in a very nice, respectful way. Sometimes he’s been passionate about what he truly believes in. Nothing wrong, everything right, about that! But his passion for the Hispanic livery drivers and their customers during his last few months as a  Worcester City Councilor (that’s why they were his last few months!) turned lots of political movers and shakers off. They whispered amongst themselves: Juan’s gone rogue! When he lead a group of clapping chanting livery drivers out of City Hall as a show of solidarity during a city council meeting when he was city councilor, well, that didn’t do at all! His political demise was written on the City Council chambers wall…

We loved it! Juan was right! Juan was real and cool and INSPIRING! The city shitheads renounced him, in their heads, right then and there! Here was the Juan who used to eat lunch with former City Manager Tom Hoover over at the MID TOWN MALL, across from City Hall, over at the Latino lunch hot spot SABANA’s being  mentally blacklisted! He used to tell Tom Hoover: Come! Enjoy the spicey treats of my culture! Hoover did! Along with the scores of other cool folks! The line for lunch at Sabana’s used to go our the door! The old cool Worcester vibe! Back then it wasn’t all smug and phoney and boutiquey. Just urban. A white Polish guy from Toledo breaking bread with a little Puerto Rican guy from Worcester! Enormous!

Can you imagine Ed Augustus eating lunch in the MID TOWN MALL (a place on his urban renewal hit list) with Juan Gomez, a political outcast? Especially after Juan felt cheated after this election and held a press conference or two about it and almost pushed for a ballot recount?!

Of course the City of Worcester wasn’t going to give Juan his Latino arts center, give him the $$$hundred-plus grand he needed to begin his project.

It’s the Worcester way!

So the PIP continues to languish and be an unsightly magnet for drugs and crime EVERY DAY. And Worcester’s Hispanic community and Downtown Worcester don’t get a cool, racial barrier busting Latino Arts Center!

Another lead balloon rolls down Worcester!

Worcester Public Library parking lot targeted again for development

By Steven R. Maher

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

In 2012 city officials unveiled a plan to develop the Worcester Library parking lot into a hockey rink. When opposition to this proposal arose – including from the Worcester School Committee and a Worcester library task force – city officials located another site for the hockey rink.

But when the Worcester City Council on June 14, 2016 unanimously approved the Urban Revitalization Plan, a page in the display package at the meeting entitled “Primary Development Opportunities” listed the library parking lot as the fourth among seven top “opportunities”. Among the projects considered less an “opportunity” by city officials include the old Paris Cinema and Filene’s building.

The library parking lot is not a behemoth straddling any downtown arteries. The area available to the public contains approximately 400 parking spaces, of which approximately 175 spaces are set aside for Quinsigamond University students at the school’s downtown Worcester campus.

Urban blight

The Urban Revitalization Plan is one of the most audacious – and complex – redevelopment programs city government has ever put forward. The blueprint encompasses 118.4 acres of land with 380 properties in the downtown Main Street corridor, will cost an estimated $104 million, create 1,100 construction jobs over the project’s twenty year lifespan, and 1,400 permanent jobs.

“The plan has been developed over the past year by the City of Worcester and Worcester Redevelopment Authority [WRA], in conjunction with consultant BSC Group, with significant public input. A Citizen Advisory Committee, made up of 15 representatives of the community, helped shape the plan over the course of 10 public meetings,” asserts the city on its website. “The urban renewal program invests the WRA, as a designated urban renewal agency, with certain powers to catalyze development within an urban renewal area. Urban renewal powers include the power to determine what areas within its jurisdiction constitute decadent, substandard or blighted open areas, the power to acquire property through eminent domain and access to certain public funding sources.”

Past urban renewal took the form of a “scorched earth” gambit in which whole city blocks were bulldozed. The Urban Revitalization Plan is a “weed and seed” approach in which the city seeks to cultivate the rehabilitation of cityscape blemishes, which have deteriorated over time due to a lack of investment. If necessary, the city will use its imminent domain powers, subject to City Council approval, to take these eyesores and sell them to entrepreneurs with the wherewithal to rehabilitate them.

This endeavor, if successful, will regenerate the municipal center into a much cleaner urban core, with each distinct parcel harmonizing and strengthening each other as a whole, reviving jobs, tax revenue, and property values.

Past opposition

Few would dispute that the Salem Square main library is one of the city’s great gems. Reopened after $20 million in renovations in 2001 (including a 50,000 square foot extension), the library collection included, according to the Worcester Telegram, “520,000 books, more than 370,000 government documents, 72,000 microfilms, 46,000 talking books, nearly 8,000 videotapes and more than 1,000 magazines and newspapers.”

Capital upgrades since 2001 have made the Worcester library probably the best public facility of its kind in Central Massachusetts. With its self-service kiosks, automated book take-out and return scanners, and dozens of computers on the three public floors available free of charge to the public, it is a technically sophisticated marvel. The library is often packed with users, particularly the computer terminals. The strong police presence makes the most crime-adverse library customer feel secure.

Without parking nearby, the city could end up with another white elephant on its hands – a dinosaur that residents can’t access without walking several blocks from downtown parking garages, particularly in the middle of a nasty winter. As one board member of the Friends of the Worcester Public Library said at a WRA meeting: “Many patrons of the library have limited mobility or young children, parking needs to be in close proximity.”

After the 2012 plan was made public, opposition to the proposal grew, first in the InCity Times, then in the blogosphere, and then among city boards.

“Criticism of the plan has centered on a proposal to construct an ice rink in the municipal parking lot next to the library,” the Worcester Telegram reported on November 29, 2012. “A library task force has recommended against putting an ice rink there because of the impact it would have for library patrons, along with aesthetic concerns about how it would fit into the neighborhood.”

The Worcester School Committee opposed the plan. The minutes of their March 13, 2013 meeting record: “To ask that the City Council, in addressing the Downtown Master Plan, preserve the current parking lot behind the Worcester Public Library, for the benefit and well-being of the citizens – and especially of the children of Worcester – who depend on the library.”

In March 2016 Worcester’s daily newspaper reported that the city had approved plans for the hockey rinks on Winter Street in the Canal District.

The Worcester Library parking lot is not a “decadent, substandard or blighted open area”. It is a necessary adjunct to a thriving and safe city asset. There is a distinct possibility the Worcester Library might evolve into another Worcester Airport, an under-utilized fossil rendered extinct by the wrong decisions of city officials blinded by the Holy Grail of downtown development.

Across the street from the PIP: old building gets new future!

By Ron O’Clair

Has anyone noticed the wonderful job they did bringing back the Junction Mills Project to a new life for the old structure? It is worth a trip to see the old eyesore looking fit and healthy once again and being filled up with new people to bring a much needed boost to the area that I have resided in by choice since 1996, in July.
  
The building I am concerned with, the one I live in at the corner of Main and Charlton streets – the “Charlton” at 707 Main St. – these many years now has a bright future ahead of it as well, seeing as how it was purchased recently by New Era Property LLC.

The new owners are buying their first commercial property in Worcester, and as astute businessmen, they are fully aware of the problems that plague the neighborhood here in the 700 block of Main Street, Main South, and this property in particular.

Knowledge is power, and they realize that in order to bring the property into the future, they need to get rid of the past.
  
That means wholesale eviction of all the people that currently reside in the building that have been involved in the vast criminal conspiracy to traffic in narcotics in one form or another. Some of them are going for simply failing to keep out the drug addicted, the street walkers who ply their trade up and down the 700 block of Main Street and bring their clients in the building to perform in one of the two bathrooms on the larger of the two sides of the rooming house.
  
Just as there are two sides to every story if not more, there are two sides that comprise the Licensed Lodging House. The people that are there all agreed to abide by the No Visitor rule prior to being offered tenancy, and sure enough once in, they chose to allow a parade of junkies, crack heads, and prostitutes to come and go as they please, to sleep in common area’s, to use the showers as well as the laundry machines, (which they tampered with to get free washing) and to cook their meals on the stove.
  
It became a homeless street persons dream home, and they had the added benefit of not having to pay any rent. No matter what I, or the owner had to say about it, they simply ignored the management requests to stay out, and conspired to gain access the moment I turned my back, or went to sleep. It was crazy like it hadn’t been for quite some time, nearly as bad as when I first took the position as building superintendent in June of 2003 when it was totally off the hook.
  
I could not get the proper and timely help I needed from the Worcester Police to catch the criminals in the act of trespassing, and when I did catch them, the police would not arrest them, instead giving them verbal orders not to come back, and a stern warning that if they did, then they would be arrested and charged. I even caught people red handed inside rooms that were supposed to be vacant and that had been securely locked, and still could not get any arrests made when I called to complain about them not just trespassing but breaking and entering as well.
  
All of that will come to a screeching halt under the new owners. They are not going to tolerate any monkey business by the criminals, or the police for that matter. They have the resources to make sure that does not happen once they start the major renovations of the building they will be spending a large sum of money to install more surveillance camera’s covering the interior portions that my system did not including the kitchens and the hallways.

These will be monitored by a security service and also be available to be viewed right in any patrol car via the internet on the Worcester Police Laptop installed in each patrol vehicle.
  
The new owners have plans to address all the deficiencies that currently affect the building and the grounds. They will be paving the rear parking area putting in a new perimeter fence and landscaping. They will be putting a new roof on the building. They will not hesitate to spend the necessary capital to improve their investment and ensure its survival as Worcester turns the corner into a new age of prosperity once Main Street is cleaned up. This building has been the magnet since before the homeless shelter moved, and even more so since that time.
  
Once these current tenants are gone, the gutting out of the interior can begin, with the installation of new everything, from kitchen cabinets, to walls, floors, and ceilings. One owner was even talking of making less units, by tearing  out dividing walls and increasing square footage that way per unit. The bathrooms will be totally rehabbed with new fixtures, plumbing tubs, sinks, walls ceilings and floors. When finished the tenants that survived the purge, will be allowed to move over to the larger side, so the smaller side can then have the same treatment.
  
The finished product will then be the finest in the immediate area, and certainly will only be rented to responsible people who do not abuse the property or themselves. They told me they would rather leave it vacant than rent to the type of people that are here now that allow the place to be overrun with drug addicts, and deadbeats who use every trick in the legal books to extend their stay even after legal eviction. I have two like that here still, even though they were legally evicted in November.
  
I imagine the exterior will also get a much needed makeover, and the place will be transformed from an eyesore into something that hopefully will spur other property owners to invest in their buildings here in the 700 block of Main Street as well. I am hoping to have the needed support of the Worcester Police to make this happen, and hopefully the neighborhood residents and businesses will also band together to put a stop to the constant drug dealing, prostitution, and criminal activity that takes place all day and all night in this immediate vicinity.
  
Maybe I am just an optimist, but if you believe hard enough that it can and will happen, then it will happen. If you are of a mind that nothing will change, then nothing will change. We need to get together and cooperate with the police to make sure we can once again be proud to say, come on down to “beautiful downtown Worcester” as Mr. Douglas (Duddie) Massad is famous for having said in his radio and television commercials selling automobiles in the greater Worcester area.

*If you like this, or even if you don’t like this, the author would love your feed back at: ronaldoclair@hotmail.com 
  
  

Thank you, Mayor Petty!

By Rosalie Tirella

Three or so weeks ago I was driving by the Chandler Elementary School playground in Piedmont – watching the little kids scramble all over the colorful little slide and play-scape Worcester Mayor Joe Petty had installed after I called him last winter and told him the kids in Piedmont, an inner-city neighborhood that doesn’t have a lot of green, open space, could use a little something fun in their ‘hood. The playground was all concrete and kinda bleak.

Well, as soon as spring had sprung, not only was a playground installed by the city, but a mini-community garden had sprouted up as well! Such a joy to see the tall sunflowers in their raised flower beds swaying in the summer breeze! In June and July you could see Dads sitting on the new benches installed around the colorful slides and ladders watching their little kids play.

As I drove by the school a few weeks ago and watched the little kids and their parents enjoying the playscape in early, but mild, wintertime, I saw this: A boy, about 12, a few yards away from everyone on the playscape, bouncing a basketball. He was too big for the playscape but HE WANTED TO PLAY! The little kids had no interest in hoop, he had no interest in little twirly slides. He was a solitary little man, nursing big dreams! We all know 12-, 13-, 14- and 15-year- old boys (and girls!) love to play basketball! My kid sister adored the sport and played girls varsity basketball for St. Mary’s High School on Richland Street, grades 9 to 12! My mom never missed her games – home or away! GO, TRINA, GO, TRINA! she’d yell from the bleachers during the games, standing up with the crowd, cheering!

But here, in Piedmont, there was no basketball hoop for this tween to WOOSH his basketball through! No backboard to use as a backdrop for a wanna-be hook shot. No crowd or even a few pals to watch the action, CHEER HIM ON. Where could he dribble his basketball to???!

So there the boy stood, bouncing his basketball on grey concrete in the winter sun during one of our unseasonably mild winter days.

My God!!! I thought to myself, this kid would love a pick up game of hoop with the neighborhood kids! He’s just itching to practice his foul shots! I can tell!

And what boy couldn’t use a good, brisk, get-your-cheeks-ruddy run around his neighborhood school yard!?

So I called Mayor Petty! I have him on mental speed dial cuz he’s so good when it comes to caring about inner-city kids!

Joe! I said, totally in the moment … . We need you!!!!!

I told him what I just told you: I SEE THIS BOY, JUST BOUNCING A BASKETBALL. HE’S TOO BIG TO PLAY ON THE PLAYSCAPE. HE WANTS TO PLAY HOOP! I BET A LOT OF THE OLDER KIDS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD WANT TO PLAY BASKETBALL, TOO. CAN YOU PUT IN A HOOP FOR THEM?

Petty is Worcester’s QUIET MAN – our John Wayne: understated, modest honorable and honest. He gets things done. THE RIGHT THINGS, with ZERO gabbing, backslapping or phony politician-speak. Refreshing!

Yes, is what he said to me. We’ll work on it.

That’s all!

I knew he’d come through! And drove by the Chandler Street School playground smiling!

Then I drove by once a week to check on the progress. Yesterday I saw this:

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Brandy new!

Shining bright!

A beacon of fun in a tough urban environment! For our city kids!

I’m amazed that Worcester doesn’t throw a parade in honor of Petty. He’s our Tom Menino: he’s got THE VISION FOR A GREAT CITY and SWEATS THE SMALL STUFF, the basketball hoops, the playscapes, the little improvements that make a big difference in neighborhoods – especially the poor and working class.

A thousand tweaks, scores of playgrounds, dozens of murals, one more neighborhood celebration, PLEASE! – this is what gives a city its complex beauty!

Yes, it’s only a basketball hoop.

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But not to the 12-year-old boy bouncing his basketball.

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(Now, maybe some wonderful volunteers can paint in a foul line and/or make all that concrete a mini basketball court?)

Looking good, downtown Worcester!

As we tooled around the city Sunday, we caught these great holiday lamppost lights going up all along our grey Main Street. Yipee! Downtown Worcester needs a little Christmas – NOW!

Go, downtown Woo, go!

text+pics: R. Tirella

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