CitySquare IV: A New Hype

This view from Washington Street, looking straight into the center of town, is one that gives a perspective on the past.

Once upon a time, Washington Street ran right into the heart of the downtown area.

Today, it dead-ends (or begins, actually) at the railroad. They named this street for the first President of the United States, but its importance in that regard has faded from living memory.

There appears to be several other streets in Worcester that were named after Presidents, too. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln, Johnson, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton, and even Bush, are all streets or roads or avenues in the city that have presidentially familiar names, ...but we can probably rest assured that they weren't ALL given those names for that reason.

The railroad put a dead-end to the beginning of Washington Street. It had to be a long time ago, for the railroad has been there for decades.

This view is where I'd estimate Washington Street would've come through on the other side of the railroad.

I took this picture at McGrath and YWCA Way.

As we move closer to the former Worcester Center Galleria, more lately called the Common Fashion Outlets, and even more lately promising to be called CitySquare, it's interesting to note that Washington Street, back when it continued in a straight line (before the railroad tracks chopped it off), would've run just about where YWCA Way is today.

It would have gone right to the front of Notre Dame Church, where it once intersected with Franklin.

Worcester may have changed a lot over the many years that it grew from a farming village into an industrial center, but the impetus of small businesses growing into big businesses, and then having their wealthy owners erecting beautiful buildings, is certainly not the driving force behind our changing landscape these days.

The driving force behind the CitySquare project, in particular, has no slightest connection to Worcester's former "reason why" large structures got built.

This project is more along the lines of the kids deciding to acquire a bunch of gaudy new furniture at the Rent-A-Center.

It's not a new idea, either. The Mall has been a gaudy "solution" twice now, and it has failed twice.

Of course, ...If we DO get the new furniture, maybe the guests will like us better.

Now that the biggest project in town has just been quietly extended for another year of limbo, I wonder how much longer we're going to be strung along.

This fourth episode of the CitySquare project had better be a good one, because the whole thing has gone way beyond any point where hype is going to sustain any slightest hope that it will ever even begin.

Meanwhile, the small businesses in the city labor on, paying the full tab... and they all see how the city gives away millions in gifts and tax incentives and all sorts of other gushing at the feet of those with the outside money.

Will those big bucks guys from out of town decide to move here, to settle here, to raise their children here? Will they and their children bestow the city with gifts for libraries and schools and erect beautiful buildings that Preservation Worcester will someday be working to add to the national register of historic buildings?

Of course not. Those fat cats from out of town only "invest" here to rake a profit OUT of the city. The Young Parks and the Walton Family and all the other out of town corporate bigshots who might want to build big boxes in this town are lured here for one reason and one reason only, to suck as much OUT of this town as they can.

Worcester commerce for future generations doesn't depend on outside money. The only thing that outside money can give us is a short term spike... and inflated rents.

The actual, long term commercial future of this city is dependant upon the small businesses that may someday grow into big businesses. The commercial future of Worcester can only work in the hands of those who would be an integral part of the community, who have a genuine and personal stake here. Until the decision-makers in town bestow the TIF's and DIF's and any other genuine incentives to small businesses that will be run by residents of this city, and whose children will live here and grow here and BE the future of Worcester... until that view is understood and nurtured here, the misguided giveaways and incentives to big, out of town businesses will simply continue to allow them to do their profit-taking and then leave an empty building behind when the going gets tough.

They'll do what Shaw's did on Grafton Street, and leave us with another empty building.

...another empty building like the one at 100 Front Street.