Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | April 17, 2017 | Worcester Business Journal 13 W G R E E N B U S I N E S S F O C U S 290 290 Shrewsbury Street East Worcester St. H en ry S t. Cross St. La r k i n S t. E ast C en tr a l S tr ee t Ford St. Sha m rock S t. Franklin Street CSX Sunoco Station CSX Saint Vincent Hospital 0.3 miles, 5 minutes Post Office Worcester Common Worcester Public Library Union Station Worcester Ice Center 0.3 miles, 7 minutes Summer Street Foster St. Fos t e r S t. Foster St. Trumble St. Mercantile St. Commercial St. H a r d i ng S t. Mercatile Center Homewood Suites 1 6 8 3 2 7 4 5 Washington Square DCU Center 0.3 miles, 6 minutes Armsby Abbey 0.7 miles, 15 minutes City Hall 0.4 miles, 8 minutes Crompton Collective 0.5 miles, 10 minutes Wormtown Brewery 0.3 miles, 6 minutes British Beer Co. 0.7 miles, 15 minutes Walkability: From Washington Square to Worcester's destinations Even though the paths aren't friendly to pedestrians, Worcester's popular attractions are within a 15-minute walk of Union Station. hotel without a restaurant, in order to encourage guests to get out and about to Shrewsbury Street and other nearby Worcester destinations. "We're very anxious to be tied into Shrewsbury Street, where our guests can walk down to a number of great restaurants," said James Karam, First Bristol's president and CEO. Focal point to the city The city plans to encourage Washington Square improvements by looking at a $1-million, city-owned par- cel between the rotary and the elevated train line, Augustus said. The 0.6-acre site could be expanded to about 1 acre – and therefore made more marketable – by eliminating an closed-off access road that once led from Summer Street to Foster Street. "We're going to start very aggressively marketing that as a development site," Augustus said. Making Washington Square more walkable and developable has been more than a decade in the making. The rotary itself was shrunk nearly a decade ago in a process that made the intersec- tion more pedestrian-friendly and opened up more than an acre of build- able land. A 2006 study called for a hotel where Homewood Suites is soon to open, and a four-story office building across Summer Street. New uses on the square would enliven an area that today feels like more of a void between neighborhoods. The area around Union Station should be transform from a vehicular- dominated zone to one where residents and visitors will want to walk around, said Michael Testa, president of the Grafton Hill Neighborhood Association. He said he doesn't know of anyone who walks to and from the station, which he called a focal point to the city. "I don't see anyone walking," he said. "Not as much as when I was younger, when everyone was walking." Inexpensive improvements Making a neighborhood walkable doesn't have to involve expensive over- hauls, said Robert Ping, the Portland, Ore.,-based executive director of the Walkable and Liveable Cities Institute. It can be as simple as a bucket of paint, Ping said: a road that can be reduced from four lanes to two slows down traf- fic and makes it safer for those walking. Adding bike lanes, planting trees and bringing new buildings closer to the street all create a more human scale, he said, something that hasn't always been favored by engineers. "Unfortunately, planning has tended to favor speed and automotive uses over everything else," he said. For the potential walking paths out of Washington Square, the Canal District Alliance has been leading a proposal to light up and add artwork to what are now several dark train overpasses, like on Green Street or Harding Street. City officials are talking with the state Department of Transportation to make more inviting the area underneath I-290. The north side of the street under the viaduct will become part of the Homewood Suites parking lot, while the other side is a fenced-in city parking lot deemed in the 2006 report to be too small for development, suggesting instead space potentially for public art. Washington Square's potential is what helped draw James Karam to develop Homewood Suites at that location. "I've been attracted to Worcester for a long time," he said. Karam, a former UMass trustee, said he noticed Worcester's evolution when he'd visit the UMass Medical School. The city administration is "very focused on where they're going and where they want to be," he said. With Karam's Homewood Suites opening in May, Worcester officials are working to get more development in Washington Square, particularly the parcel across Summer Street from the hotel. M A P / M I T C H E L L H A Y E S

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