As Donald Trump ravages our nation’s capital with his expensive vanity projects (e.g., Kennedy Center, reflecting pool, ballroom, “triumphal arch”), Northampton is threatened by a vanity project of its own: Picture Main Street.
How ironic that on the eve of the Northampton Jazz Festival the city’s Boston design firm unveiled the latest computer images of its imagined utopia. During years of ripping up Main Street, how will community events like Taste of Northampton, First Night, sidewalk sales, and the Jazz Festival be held amidst the chaos? How will our treasured locally owned restaurants and other businesses survive the traffic congestion, noise, and loss of parking spaces and shade trees? How will pedestrians safely cross two bike lanes used primarily by young people speeding on silent electric devices?
No wonder the city has never held a formal public hearing on Picture Main Street (as distinct from show-and-tell sessions), and does not dare to hold another trial run of its decreed design after the failure of an earlier one in 2020. Speaking of failures, what does the mayor plan to do with the “hulk on the hill” for which the city paid over twice its fair market value in 2023 to acquire for a “resilience hub?”
Rutherford H. Platt
Florence