Nathaniel Hawthorne lives here?!

Two Hawthorne Boulevard 002, originally uploaded by dmoisan.

When I rail against over-entitled "historic" property owners and snob Salemites (Hi, Washington Square! Hi, Federal!), a bitter gibe I'll never stop making is that these people really think Nathaniel Hawthorne lives in their building or in their neighborhood, spreading historic character, not to mention property values.

At Two Hawthorne Boulevard, it's really true! This is a sheet of paper printed off a realtor's color laser and stuck to the corner of The Old Spot, kitty-corner from the hotel.

According to the website, units start at $200K for one bedroom. Nathaniel can be your neighbor at no extra charge. Granite countertops, too!

The Homeless and the "Character" of Salem

The Globe has a good article on the clash between homeless people in Boston's South End and the affluent people who are gentrifying the neighborhood.

Salem, as well, has seen this same friction. We have been rapidly gentrifying and becoming more affluent for the past ten years. Salem has had a homeless shelter for many years, at the Crombie St. Church (since moved to St. Mary's on Margin St.).

Downtown merchants and one notable neighbor, David Pelletier, fought the shelter for years. Benches at the fountain at Town House Square, a relief for weary tourists, were removed; they encouraged the "wrong" people.

The old state welfare office was in the Newmark building on Essex street for many years. When their lease ran out in the late 90's, they were encouraged to go someplace else, moving to Shetland Park, not coincidentally near the Point. With the sole exception of Social Security (now at 10 Federal, after being in Museum Place for many years), there are no human-services offices in downtown anymore. (I'm surprised there are still public housing units downtown!)

I believe, to quote what Microsoft always says for its bugs, "this behavior is by design."

One blogger in the South End says what I've always meant to say but could never seem to write:

Another one of the article's subjects describes how she has heard the patrons of her yoga studio exclaim, "I don't want to go out to my car late at night. I don't want to go there," in reference to the throngs of homeless clogging the streets much like the zombies in the recent film "I am Legend."

My response? You don't GET to go there!! As I have mentioned on this blog before, like a mantra, get over yourselves! You live in a CITY, not a suburb! You don't get to choose your neighbors and keep in mind: they were there a long, long time before you and your yoga mat showed up. If you choose to live in a city, there is a trade-off. You GET to walk out your front door in the morning and walk to pick up your soy latte within 50 steps of your condo.

This is the mentality amongst condo-dwellers even in Salem. They typically paid (er, took out an overleveraged mortgage) $400,000 and up for their condo. The realtor promised them pristine urban living, and since this is Salem, Currier & Ives horses that don't poop, and Nathaniel Hawthorne as a bonus! (UPDATE: You can live with Nathaniel, apparently!)

These people are bitterly resentful of every dirty fact of urban life that intrudes upon the fantasy. They hate each and every piece of infrastructure--snow plows, exposed overhead wires, gas stations, convenience stores, phone poles, the Salem Harbor Power Station--that makes it even possible for them to live where they do.

Even a homeless shelter is necessary infrastructure, considering the alternatives.

I wrote before about the harbor-front condos on Derby St. that won't get built. Look at the location again. There's a gas station next door. The back edge of Derby St. at the South River is mostly industrial; they were there first. And across the water is the Point, Salem's poorest neighborhood.

What would condo owners say?

"Can't you do something about those people?" "Isn't it a shame what those tenements do to the character of the city?" "I'm living next to a gas station?!!"

I've grown up in a city for 43 years and have seen the best, and too often the worst, of Salem and urban living. I've lived downtown for 13 of those years. I was fortunate to be able to choose to live downtown and I tolerate a lot of things so I can have easy access to the T and easy walking to work and the local CVS. I even put up with the Federal St. snobs and those who won't let me in their neighborhood groups because I'm a renter and I didn't take out a huge mortgage for a tiny condo.

It's disgraceful, but not that I expect our politicians to really listen.

Hat tip: The South End Is Over: Be Ashamed....

Impassable sidewalks at St. Peter St., Gazette weighs in

[View of Howard St. from St. Peter. during a snowstorm in 2005.]

The Gazette's Robert Moran chimes in on impassable sidewalks, and brings up the same points that I've been making for some time. He talks about my "favorite" neighborhood, St. Peter, Bridge & Howard, seen in the photo:

Absentee owners are among the worst. The old jail and Howard Street Cemetery are particularly galling. Running an entire block from Howard to St. Peter and a half block up St. Peter, they sit between home and the Salem Depot for scores of commuters.

Yet, the sidewalks are never cleared. Access to the busy crosswalk at St Peter and Bridge is impossible. For fans who like their sports extreme and potentially bloody, the two-hour, Bridge Street dodge ball game is a twice-a-day spectacle following a snowstorm.

I have as close an insider perspective as one can have. I live at the corner and have watched the bypass road being built and I've seen the blueprints. The stretch of Bridge St. between Howard and St. Peter is going to change. In the photo you might be able to see the hints of a road near the townhouses at the left top of the frame.

This is part of the new alignment for Bridge St. From Howard St., the road will take a northward jog to meet the new road, which will itself curve back south at St. Peter. The existing road will be turned into a pedestrian island. A photo is on my Flickr page; the intersection is at the lower right.

As Mr. Moran knows, there has never been a paved sidewalk on the jail's side of Bridge St. ever since it closed. The pedestrian signal there, now all by itself, forlorn, was originally placed to service pedestrian traffic to long-gone Parker Brothers. Heavy trucks now use the circular "driveway" in front of the jail for parking and turnaround, so this hasn't been good for pedestrians in the summer, either.

I have to share a little responsibility for this situation at St. Peter. Last summer, I was watching the construction and was totally convinced that Bridge St. would be realigned that fall. Then there would be the possibility that the closed part of Bridge St. would be a temporary sidewalk.

I and my fellow Commissioner, Charlie Reardon (who lives on Howard St himself), had planned to meet with Sue Cranney to discuss that section of Bridge St., but winter almost literally overtook us before we were able to arrange that. Worse yet, the realignment did not happen last fall; Bridge St., would keep its present alignment for another year. (The road is nearly complete and reconstruction at the St. Peter intersection will be the final major part of the project in 2008.)

We hear a lot about impassable sidewalks at the Salem Commission on Disabilities; I take every report personally. I'm sorry we couldn't get this resolved at St. Peter, but I plan on watching the construction closely and I will ask Ms. Cranney to keep a temporary pathway for pedestrians and wheelchair users when construction starts up again in the spring.

Of course, I'm aware that the bypass road and the intersection at St. Peter may well be the worst intersection for pedestrians in all of Salem when it is completed, but we have no choice now but to fish the pearls out of...manure, so to speak.

Waterfront condo project 'dead'

Ferris wheel at 289 Derby. The proposed condos would have been six stories or about the height of the spoke of the wheel. Derby Lofts, in the background, is five stories.

The condos next door to SATV are officially dead: Waterfront condo project 'dead' - SalemNews.com, Salem, MA

This was a waterfront project, fronting the South River, and Massachusetts has strict regulations on public access to the waterfront. Many private projects, such as the Jefferson apartments on the North River and the condo complex near the Willows and Collins Cove, have public walkways directly on the coast per regulations. The city has been working with the state for several years to build a walkway between Lafayette and Derby St. on the water and the city just got money to build a playground at the Lafayette St. end next to Wendy's.

The developers had to have known this:

"At this point, I would consider it dead," said Henry Bertolon, the Beverly developer who took over the project more than a year ago.

Harborview Place was the victim of a down real estate market and, according to Bertolon, foot-dragging by a state environmental agency. The long delay obtaining a state waterways license from the Department of Environmental Protection hurt the project, he said.
"The DEP sat on it for 15 months," Bertolon said. "It's a shame - they would have been built and sold (by now) if the DEP had been more responsive."
The DEP disputed that claim, saying some of the delay was due to valid issues raised by the public.

Do developers really think, "Oh, we'll get the city, the state and everybody around to rubber-stamp this and ram it through before the economy turns?"

What turnip truck did we fall off of?

A project as complex as that condo, with its underground parking, is not going to be finished or even substantially complete in 15 months! Two other comparable projects in the area, the Derby Lofts project and the old police station each took about 3 years from permitting to construction.

The expansion project at 10 Federal to add three floors did take about 16 months, but there was no parking involved. The parking garage that was planned has been put on hold and perhaps shelved.

It's obvious now that the real estate market was peaking when that project was permitted three years ago. Any informed observer could have seen that but for Upton Sinclair, who said, "It's very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Developers and advertisers, the Salem News and the Salem Gazette, have an interest that depends on their deliberately not understanding our economy. Politicians, too. I expect the News to be calling us ignorant peasants who don't appreciate the benefits of development, or is it, the benefits of real estate ads, rampant gentrification and the "cool dynamic hip people" that these ads solicit.

And Tom Furey will say, "Oh, but it's a blow to Salem, a real tragedy!" (And why hasn't Boston and Bridge been developed all these years? Cue the crickets.)

If this does mean that Salem goes down the tubes, perhaps a future government can resolve to do it right and Salem can come back for real next time.

Let's hope.

Lenny O'Leary is no longer with us

Lenny, Mike and Leo, originally uploaded by dmoisan.

My friend Leo Jodoin emailed me Friday night: Long-time councilor Leonard F. O'Leary passed away. I was never a consituent of Lenny's, as my family moved out of Gallows Hill when Frances Grace was still councilor, but he and I and our mutual friend Leo Jodoin, worked together on Leo's Salem Senior Recognition Days.

The photo above shows Lenny, my ward councilor and Commission liason Mike Sosnowski and Leo, together at last year's Recognition Days ceremony. We had wanted Lenny to be the master of ceremonies in 2007 as he had been for the past two years of the event, but he had been sick that day.

Lenny was a frequent guest on Salem Now and a very familiar presence at SATV.

I'm normally deeply cynical about local politics, but we and Salem will really miss Lenny. Many of the really influential old-timers in Salem that remember life before condos, history as property values, and "hip, cool, dynamic residents", the truly living history, are beginning to pass from us.

We will come to regret their passing bitterly, as in many ways Lenny and others of his generation were the best of Salem, in ways I don't expect my generation or even the one before it, to ever match.

Update: The 2008 Salem Senior Recognition Days is dedicated to Lenny.

More icy sidewalks, hazardous for those in wheelchairs

Continuing the last topic of dangerous walking, we at the Salem Commission on Disabilities could just specialize in sidewalks--we'd still have more work than we could handle!

This quote from today's Globe:

If you think it has been tough trudging along Boston's snowy, icy, slushy streets and sidewalks this week, try it in a wheelchair.

The city has been a frozen obstacle course for people with disabilities, a problem compounded by businesses, institutions, and state and city agencies that have ignored their obligation to clear the way for people in wheelchairs to get from their homes to city streets, according to an advocacy group for the disabled.

Among those failing to sufficiently clear away snow have been the state's Division of Conservation and Recreation, Northeastern University, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, said the organization, called the Neighborhood Access Group.

"It's pervasive, unrelenting, and demoralizing," said the head of the group, John Kelly. He said some members may not attend their own holiday party this afternoon at a housing complex in the Fenway, because sidewalks in the vicinity are still impassable, crosswalks blocked, and wheelchair ramps treacherous.

"Many of us can't even leave our houses," he said. (emphasis added)

Several years ago, the Commission went through this problem with the Post Office in Salem. This building had a ramp retrofitted to it, running in a serpentine route to the right of the main entrance.

It was closed during the winter due to ice dams building up on the roof. Repairs to the roof were tied up for a long time due to bureaucracy. Wheelchair users were supposed to go in through the rear of the building, which is employees-only and a private area. In the meantime, 9/11 happened, and the post office was somehow convinced that it might not be a great idea for the chair-using public to pass through sensitive areas. The roof got its repairs this year and the ramp is now open, at least so far this winter.

This season, one of my fellow commissioners is fighting with the YMCA over snow removal. The YMCA building on the corner of Sewall & Essex is also the site of the Zisson elderly/disabled housing complex. The van space in front of the building has been continually blocked by an endless array of snowbanks, construction vehicles, illegally-parked cars and other such obstacles.

The parking lot, as most parking lots around the city, is choked with snow. Elderly vans and chair cars can't take on or let off their passengers. Snowmelt makes things worse as huge puddles (1" to as much as 3" deep!) form at the base of ramps where they meet the street surface. It's bad enough just walking through an inch of water, never mind in a chair or on crutches! Also, many crosswalks are located at or near storm drains and these are often clogged with snow allowing enormous curb-swallowing rivers to form!

Boston's Neighborhood Access Group is on the case! They have an excellent blog with a lot of incriminating pictures that clearly show icy sidewalks impassible to the disabled.

Most able-bodied people navigate these crossings with a lot of frustration but take them for granted; it's winter, after all. I used to do the same thing. Lately, I've started looking at the three-foot snowbanks I find outside the grocery store and saying, "Why do I have to climb over this for another year in a row! Waiting in the street for the bus doesn't build character!"

I wish I had the answer.

Globe article: Icy walkways create a special challenge for those in wheelchairs - The Boston Globe

Dangerous Walking

Every year that there's significant snow in the winter (not last year), there are plows. And covered sidewalks. And steep snowbanks. This winter is starting out like usual, and very tragically for one person.

In Blackstone, a woman walking home with her groceries, unable to walk on the sidewalk due to snowbanks, was run down by a snowplow and killed.

Several years ago, we in the disability community in Salem lost one of our best people, Tiffany Park, when she and her scooter were run down in Lynn, when she was on the way to church services. She was also forced to use the street.

For the most part, I accept winter and the compromises one has to make. I accept that I might have more problems getting around.

But I am perennially dismayed and frustrated at the great number of unplowed sidewalks in and around Salem. City ordinance requires sidewalks to be shoveled after a storm. But that's not the biggest problem.

The way in which streets are plowed after storms is even worse. Imagine a street with a T intersection, crossed by another street or, most commonly, a driveway. Usually, one plow driver from the DPW will take care of the street. A private operator with another truck or a Bobcat will do the driveway that might go back into a parking lot. The two plows will work and move the snow.

The snow ends up on the sidewalk. The natural action of the plows pushes snow to the sides, and when a plow crosses a street to do a driveway, the snow builds up in huge pillars at the corners.

Even if sidewalks are plowed in front of any one building, one often cannot go on the sidewalk; it may be blocked by a pillar, or black ice at a driveway, etc.

For walking any distance, I am forced in the street. This is downright scary.

My neighborhood, the street grid around St. Peter & Federal is one example that proves my point, with its many driveways into 10 Federal, St. John's and St. Peter's Church. Even when an individual building is plowed, the driveways make it very treacherous to walk. The Museum Place lot has no plowed sidewalks at all.

As well, many commercial establishments will plow their parking lots but not the public sidewalks that front them. The most dangerous place in Salem, I'm convinced, is the bus stop outside Market Basket (northbound Highland Ave.) Jersey barriers are more forgiving than the frozen snowbanks that cover the sidewalk there. It is not possible for even an able-bodied person (and I am NOT mobility-impaired!) to mount the snowbanks to wait for a bus.

Snow plowing and its responsiblities (and fines!) have been very contentious in Salem in past winters. This has been discussed at our commission meetings; unfortunately, too many feel that people complaining about sidewalks should move to Florida or stay homebound in the winter. I'm certainly not thrilled about bringing this issue up every year.

Source: WHDH-TV - New England News - Police seek snow plow driver after hit-and-run death