Well said, Brett, and thank you for the clarification. As one of the founding
members of the Nobscot Neighbors that you started some twelve years ago, I know
you have been at the forefront of the Nobscot project and I appreciate it
deeply. I also shared in some of the frustrations that you have faced.
Like meeting after meeting, where people with no business experience whatever
turned out to propose what they thought was a great idea for someone else to
invest their money in. Yoga studios, ice cream stands. They didn't realize that
people who do commercial real estate for a living don't just throw darts at a
board. Or take a poll of the residents. The most reliable rule in poll-taking
is that people just don't do what they said they were going to.
Back then Paul Ashton's coffee shop was still open and he very generously
allowed us to hold our meetings there. Each of those meeting attendees swore on
a stack of bibles that they would certainly support whatever business it was
they were advocating. And I wish I had a dollar for every person who walked
into Paul's cafe with a cup of Starbucks or DD coffee in their hand, rather
than putting their money where their mouth literally is. If they meant what
they said, they would have bought a cup of Paul's infinitely superior coffee
and a fresh-baked scone and taken home some fresh ground beans as well.
We held events. I gave a couple of seminars on native plants and gardening at
Paul's cafe. We set up a competition for designing and executing decorative
planters with judges form the Garden in the Woods. You, Brett, set up several
Buy-at-Nobscot weekends, challenging neighbors to spend money in the plaza
stores. And you were able with the help of several former town officials, to
finally ferret out who owned the property and why it lay fallow. And why were
were powerless to force anything to happen.
A handful of us stayed on as Town Meeting members long past the time when our
interest in that process wore thin, specifically to see the new library
approved and for years we worked at fund-raising too, made generous donations
of our own and finally three or four unbuildable lots were combined and a
library was built at an extremely low cost and with a generous grant from the
state. At last there was an anchor and a reason to preserve the plaza.
But for years afterward I got phone calls from people in my precinct
complaining that the library's design was too modern. Why didn't they allow
every one in town to vote on the design, they asked me. I asked them, Are you
an architect? No, they said, But I have very good taste. It would be funny if
I was kidding.
Point is, just because this plaza is in your neighborhood doesn't qualify you
to vote on the nature of the investment or its design. And if you've ever had
the misfortune to work on a committee of several hundred people, you would know
why that would only result in nothing ever getting done. If you live here and
own a home here the last thing you want is a broken down and vacant plaza. It
screams, Dying Neighborhood. It impacts the value of your chief investment and
asset.
I will now be set upon, here and by private email, by those who can't imagine
anything but cheap housing inhabited by raggedy people who stand around smoking
in the street and drinking from a paper bag. That is a thing that happens, and
is happening downtown now, but it is not the only kind of thing possible in
apartment building.
Traffic? Yes, traffic is going to happen. It will regardless. It will continue
to increase until something fundamental changes, like improving public
transportation or providing people a way to work from home. That's the American
way. In my neighborhood there are several three-bedroom houses with six cars
in the driveway. Not visitors; residents. Don't take my word for it, drive
around and see for yourself. Apartment living is not the cause of increased
traffic. People having the means to own at least one car each is more likely
the issue.
Development is inevitable. The population here is increasing. And the
population is aging. What do you imagine will happen to the six-bedroom
McMansions when the current residents all start to down-size but don't want to
move to Florida? Maybe what happened to the six-bedroom mansions in Dorchester
and Roxbury in the 1950s. Maybe we need to accept the inevitability of change
and work toward a sustainable one.