Well, I guess I'm overdue to come out of the lurker zone....nice to see that people still have an interest (if only fleeting) in Wormtown.
Worcester is going to have to gentrify a hell of a lot before any of the things people lament about it are going to change. The stigma is still that downtown is sketchy and unsafe, and can you really change that with just urban planning?
I can somewhat agree that a nice movie place would be a good addition to downtown, if you could somehow integrate the Centr...I mean, DCU Center into some larger entertainment complex. Maybe take the lots along Exchange and Commercial and turn them into a movie theatre/comedy club type place with some retail, connecting the Palladium and Mechanics Hall back to the DCU, and now you've got...something? Around the Common is going to take a lot more work, though.
Years ago I came across an article with a quote from the GM of the DCU saying she hopes nothing goes in that area, because if something does, the DCU can't expand (throwing the flag on that claim.....because the DCU should have been built down on Rt. 20 out of the way instead of razing a couple blocks of the city.) But you're right, something needs to go in that area. If you can eliminate at least a half of those parking lots in that area, you might have something that resembles a city.
On a similar note,
MassLive did a walk through of the Olympia Theater over on Pleasant St. and there is potential to bring it back if the right developer wants to do so. The current owner wants nothing to do with it, he just wants the rent from the storefronts on the first floor. That would be great for not just Worcester, but for the area.
Grew up in Worcester. Lived there for two decades. Neither of these buildings were worth saving. Notre Dame was always in a terrible location from an urban redevelopment perspective. Mount Carmel is literally falling apart and has been since I remember attending service in it way back in the mid-late 90's.
There's a lot of historical stuff in Worcester. Some of it is worth saving... these two buildings are not it. Other historical buildings in the downtown area that need to go: Old Worcester Boy's Club (falling apart, preservationists making ridiculous demands about preserving a basketball court in it) and The Worcester Auditorium (shit acoustics, absolutely zero purpose in the 21st century).
Redeveloping Lincoln Square is going to be the project of the 2030's in Worcester. Too autocentric right now. Too broken up by a weird combo of decrepit historical structures and terrible mid 20th century developments (Worcester Police, Old Crown Hotel parking garage).
Agreed on Notre Dame & Mt. Carmel. And I'm sure there are plenty more churches in the diocese that are falling down that will have to be closed due to no maintenance to the buildings in X amount of years.
The thing that keeps getting me irked is that Preservation Worcester keeps going "these buildings are endangered!" Ok, that's great, if you want to preserve every building as a monument, but that's not what buildings are for. It's wasting economic and development opportunities to save a building that has been vacant and/or abandoned for however long.
I disagree about the Aud. It can and should be preserved. As a theater, probably not, but it deserves to be saved.
Worcester PD will be one hell of a project if/when they replace that building.
Obviously I only wish Worcester and its residents the best.
But. They sure as heck make it hard to want to see the city succeed when they allow some of their most beautiful, historic, iconic structures to be razed for a parking lot (or, not much better, anything that looks like the new buildings they have going up). I basically think of the city -- its politicians, businesses / businessmen, and its residents -- as a bunch of savages lacking civic pride and who deserve to live in the debased city they bring about for allowing Notre Dame (and potentially Mount Carmel) to disappear form the earth.
A few quotes come to mind:
"One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” - Vincent Scully
"The peculiar combination of higher building costs, and lower architectural standards of today, a lack of vision–all these factors are making our cities uglier and more ordinary every day ... [This] is a monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age." - Ada Louise Huxtable
"It is the shame of New York, of its financial and cultural communities, its politicians, philanthropists and planners, and of the public as well, that no serious effort was made… Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves ... And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed." - Ada Louise Huxtable, again (substitute Worcester for New York)
"Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow." - James Joyce (substitute Worcester for Ireland)
If you're judging Worcester based off two buildings, you probably should reevaluate your opinion.
^ I don't disagree with you, Itchy, but I think there's a structural issue here as well beyond simply "lacking civic pride." You see this in many second-tier cities that exist in the shadow of a megacity (and this is true in Europe as well, besides just the US): an inability to balance the conflicting and paradoxical demands of what it means to be a "dense commuter suburb." Are there quite a number of exceptions? Sure. But the exceptions tend to be 1) college towns, e.g. Chapel Hill or Oxford UK, 2) places with strong historical, political or cultural cachet, e.g. New Bedford, Lowell, Providence, or 3) A strong concentration of wealth that makes land values skyrocket and encourage dense land use, e.g. White Plains.
Worcester is in a valley of despair, so to speak... it's one of the top 3 largest New England cities (top 2 by some numbers I've seen) and yet it's hard to define why exactly there's a city there.
Want to really save Worcester? Move the State House out of Boston.
(As an aside, Worcester would be phenomenally positioned as future capital of the independent New England Confederation, should that ever come to pass...)
Bingo. The issue with Worcester is one of identify. Worcester just.....exists.
As an example, as much as they claim it's a college town, it is not. It is a city with colleges in it that are walled off from the city.
Wow, $1465 for a 491 sf studio sounds steep. Looks like rents in downtown Portland are a bargain and not as bad as we thought! Wish the project well, but a 74% vacancy rate in a new building that is completely open is not good. The developer/owner may need to lower rents initially to get the occupancy rate up to a healthy level.
The pricing is a strong reason why if you can afford it that much in rent, it's better in some circumstances to look for a house instead of looking to rent.
