Worcester Business Journal

F OC U S G R E E N B U S I N E S S Creating a walkable city S hrewsbury Street is a longtime restaurant destination, the Canal District is more popular than ever, and multiple projects are breathing fresh life into downtown. Now, Worcester is looking to Washington Square to tie it all together. "That area is one of the most desir- able in New England from a walkable cities perspective," said Mullen Sawyer, president of the Canal District Allilance in Worcester. "It's really creating a cen- tral location from which to go out and connect." The landmark Union Station in Washington Square brings nearly 1,500 people on an aver- age weekday to the neighborhood for commuter rail or Amtrak trains. With the adjacent Worcester Regional Transit Authority bus hub, the station can help make Worcester more walkable than it has been in decades. "Union Station was intended to jumpstart or be the lynchpin to redevelop the Washington Square, Shrewsbury Street and down- town area," City Manager Edward Augustus said. But Washington Square's ability to connect with adjacent neighborhoods has a lot of room for improvement, said Mariela Alfonzo, the founder and CEO of State of Place, a firm that uses several hundred factors and algorithms to score a city's "place quality," or how well it works as walkable, livable space where people want to be. Pedestrian unfriendly Alfonzo took a look in particular at the stretch from Union Station to Shrewsbury Street as a pedestrian would encounter it. She found too few pedestrian or bike amenities, poor aes- thetics and the Interstate 290 overpass combining to form a significant barrier in getting people from walking from the station to any of the neighborhood's restaurants. Sidewalks are narrow, with no buffer between pedestrians and car traffic, particularly under the highway and train overpasses, she said. There are long stretches with no real land uses or destinations lining the street. Alfonzo criticized a lack of places to sit – "although right now, I wouldn't want to sit anywhere along the path," she adds – and too few crosswalks. Yet there are some assets: Washington Square is nicely landscaped with islands where pedestrians can pause between roadways, and much of the area has attractive light- ing, she said. Closer than you think Better stitching together neighbor- hoods could allow pedestrians to walk among destinations closer together than people realize. The DCU Center, Wormtown Brewery and the future Worcester Ice Center are all about a five-minute walk from the front steps of Union Station. The Crompton Collective and City Hall are 10 minutes, and the restaurants British Beer Co. and Armsby Abbey are 15 minutes by foot. The train station is the only active use right on Washington Square, but that will soon change. A 118-room Homewood Suites will open in May, a project designed to take advantage of its surroundings and the close walking distance to these Worcester landmarks. "It's a good amenity for our guests," said Jeff Karam, a vice president for Fall River-based First Bristol Corp., the developer of the Homewood Suites. First Bristol intentionally built its Worcester officials are working with developers to improve Washington Square and show how close-knit the city really is BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal Digital Editor 12 Worcester Business Journal | April 17, 2017 | wbjournal.com First Bristol Corp. Vice President Jeff Karam wanted to build the Homewood Suites on Washington Square for its potential to tie into adjacent Worcester neighborhoods. "We're very anxious to be tied into Shrewsbury Street, where our guests can walk down to a number of great restaurants." James Karam First Bristol's president and CEO P H O T O S / E D D C O T E

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