The tables and chairs scattered around on the pavement of the blocked-off Court Square make a good idea look unattractive and uninviting. Greenfield needs a larger, greener Town Common, and having a wide paved roadway running between the Common and the Town Hall has always been a bad idea. The landscape designers and town officials who have recommended that we return much of the paved-over land to the common deserve our praise and support.
The way they set up the pilot was mistaken. Placing concrete Jersey barriers to close off the byway, and setting up a few small, uncomfortable metal tables and chairs on the pavement give passersby no indication of how useful that area could become if the section of paved street in front of Town Hall were to become integrated into our all too small Town Common. Instead, it has given rise to jokes and derision, and even to a petition demanding the return of car and truck traffic to an area that would more appropriately become a pedestrian-friendly green space.
If there were a sign in the area picturing of how the designers would reconfigure the space, more people might come to appreciate the potential of an increase in the size of one of our most public gathering places. I suggest there be more publicity in the Recorder, describing the project and how it would contribute to the quality of life in our downtown. There also needs to be a plan to reconfigure traffic signals to ensure smooth movement through the intersection of Main, Federal and Bank Row.
Currently, Greenfield appears uninviting. The main entrance to town at the junction of Routes 2 and I-91 looks like a war zone, with the old Howard Johnson lot filled with weeds and rubble, and the ugly and unfinished, and boarded-up concrete bunker next to the Planet gas station. Once-thriving Greenfield increasing looks seedy with empty storefronts; the deteriorating yellow frame buildings over the railroad tunnel and next to the empty space where once there was a store front; the old Knapp Hardware building and its parking crumbling; the abandoned Wilson’s Department Store building sitting empty.
Our city planners need to find ways to showcase how the expanded Common area will contribute to the beautification of, and quality of life in the downtown.
Wilson Roberts is a former Greenfield Town Council president.