Equilibria
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- Joined
- May 6, 2007
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"The Street" is 100% done from the outside, but a lot of the interior spaces on the upper floors are still under construction. For a mall, it's not bad. I only drove through the parking lot... which is terrible. They just redid it and it's now a thousand times worse. Confusing traffic patterns make it impossible to drive more than a few feet without coming on three or four cars who cant figure out how to get around each other.
They really missed an opportunity there, I think. They went for the maximum constructability within existing footprints, but having all of that outdoor patio space up against Route 9 kind of murders its effectiveness. If they'd just flipped the parking lot and the buildings so that it was up against Hammond Pond, they could have had something special there (especially with Hammond Pond Reservation right there). As it is, it just feels half-assed.
Finally, Chestnut Hill Square (I think that's what they're calling it). I didn't spend any time anywhere but Wegmans, but it lives up to the hype. They absolutely blow every other supermarket around here out of the water. Despite having a Stop & Shop and a Shaws within less than a mile of my house, Wegmans is my new go-to supermarket. I hope to god they put Shaws out of business and take over their spaces.
Could not disagree more. Wegman's is fine - I shop there a bit - but the new Star Market in Chestnut Hill makes it look like a dump. That store is bright and pleasant and feels a little swanky (even if the bread is hidden down some random aisle), while Wegman's feels like a cramped Costco with nicer finishes. I mean, a supermarket is warehousey by nature, but Wegman's really shows it, and it feels every bit as cramped as it has to be given the small square footage.
At least a third of the store is given over to prepared foods - for whom exactly? The only people I see eating there are Wegman's employees, and with no front-facing entrance it's not convenient for office lunchers.
They also redid Route 9 a bit out front, and no surprise they screwed it up. They added another lane on the inbound side from roughly Florence street to the ramps for the Hammond Pond Parkway. But for some reason instead of doing the logical thing and having the new lane be exit-only for Hammond, and the middle lane be an option lane (either exit or continue straight over the overpass) they have the new lane continue about 200' further past the offramp and then end in a merge before the overpass. Horrible backups from typical masshole behavior of waiting until the last second to merge. Just unbelievably stupid planning.
USDOT should just ban lanes that end without an exit on Federally-funded highways to change the behavior. It's stupid every time it's done, and it's done a lot in Massachusetts.