I have never wanted to live in Boston.
I’m sure there are many fine people who live in Boston, but I much prefer the small town feel of Greenfield. Even though we call ourselves a “city” now, we still have the same population density we had in 1950 — and I don’t miss the noise and clutter of the metro area. At all.
I remember crawling through bumper-to-bumper traffic on Storrow Drive in Boston and passing a sign which read: “If you lived here, you’d be home now.” My reaction was: “I’m sure glad I don’t live here, and I’d much rather be in my living room in Greenfield.”
I have thought about that Boston sign a lot in recent months, thinking about the changes I see happening around me in Greenfield, and how I often feel that urban sprawl is starting to raise its head in the city I call home. I read the land transfers every Friday in the Recorder, and I see more limited liability corporations buying homes. I know several people who have emigrated here, attracted by housing prices that are still more attractive than Suffolk County. We enjoy a fragile small-town quality of life that you can’t buy at any price in Boston.
I see the shadow of “small town urbanism” hovering over our town. More national retail chains locating on the edge of town, industrial values as a share of taxes shrinking. The empty Days Inn that once housed displaced Haitians. Major condo developments on land on the edge of town, near the river, where once Native Americans hunted and fished.
I see city officials expanding the boundaries of growth — both outwards and upwards. Housing closer together, multiple dwelling units on one lot. Proposals to build higher, and stack apartments on top of one another. Townhouses near railroad tracks. Downtown landlords ending retail leases, replacing them with “market rate” apartments. The single- family homes that are being converted into group homes, lodging houses, and sober homes. More properties that are no longer owner-occupied, or tax-exempt. Developers who say they are building for the “missing middle class,” and are targeting “top of the market” housing that looks like gentrification to me.
Now we are debating the future of a single parking lot on Hope Street, that has become a symbol of a crossroads we find ourselves at. This parking lot had a temporary fire station built on it — but in its last year in operation produced more revenue from parking fees than $10 million worth of housing. For me, we are not really voting on one parking lot — we are holding a referendum about a symbol of the conflict between a rural town in a rural county vs creeping urbanism.
In the process we are silencing the voice of neighbors. Will we reach a point where we no longer need planning or zoning boards, because anything can be built anywhere without permits? It’s ironic to me that a quiet neighborhood on “Sunrise Avenue” has become the focal point for the “sunsetting” of the single-family housing versus a “condo commune” superimposed over one of few areas of nature trails left in our town.
Our only population still growing in our town are the 65+ boomers, who raised their children here, and paid property taxes for decades after those children had graduated, and many of them moved elsewhere. It feels a little like “throwing Momma from the train.” I’m uncomfortable urging seniors to leave a home that holds all the memories of a spouse who has passed, and children that left the nest.
The referendum on Nov. 4 for me is also about people’s sense of disappointment with local government. Do constituents really have a voice? Public comment is timed by a stop watch. No conversations happen at board or council meetings. We have created an “urban democracy” where the voters are as hollowed out as their downtown.
I’m voting “Yes” on Question 1 on Nov. 4. I’m not thinking just about a parking lot, I’m lamenting what we’re doing to the character of our community.
I keep thinking about that Boston sign, and how it would read in Greenfield: “If you lived here, you wouldn’t feel like home now.”
David Lanoie is a former Greenfield Selectman.