The council votes Tuesday on the final design for Riverfront Commons. This page has supported the project since 2024 and supports it now. It is the best use of eleven acres of contaminated industrial ground that anyone has proposed in forty years.
We still think the council should hold one more hearing before voting.
The parking question was never actually answered
The design that goes to a vote replaces a 210-space garage with a 60-space surface lot. That is a defensible choice — the garage was expensive, ugly and probably oversized. But the town has never published an estimate of where the other cars go on a Saturday in July.
Council members Menon and Halloran have asked for that estimate three times. Each time they have been told, correctly, that a traffic study exists. Each time it has turned out that the study models the 2024 design with the garage in it.
A study of a plan you are no longer building is not a study of the plan you are building.
This is a fixable problem
Public Works has said updating the model would take about three weeks. The state grant deadline is in December. There is room in the calendar for a September vote, and no serious risk to the funding.
Three weeks is a small price for removing the single most durable objection to a park this town will use for a century. It also removes the argument, which we will otherwise hear at every meeting for the next four years, that the council rushed it.
What we would ask for
- An updated traffic model for the design actually being approved
- A written plan for Water Street and Elm on peak summer weekends, even if that plan is “we will monitor it&rdquo
- ;One evening hearing, at a time working people can attend, which 4 p.m. on a Tuesday is not
Approve the park. Take the three weeks. Both things are possible.