Salem Jail Progress—and Parking?

The Salem Jail project is progressing with coverage in the Salem Gazette, “Old Salem Jail Moves Towards Reopening”, and the Salem News, which is reporting on the developers’ recent proposal to reconfigure the greenspace at the Veterans’ Riverway for parking

This is the area:

At a recent community meeting (that I wasn’t at), the developers want to reconfigure at least part of this space for parking.  Otherwise, they say, the restaurant long proposed and long desired, won’t happen.

Quote from the News:

"The way we'd envision it is to retain a large percentage of the green space and have it landscaped in such a way that it's attractive," said David Goldman, a principal at New Boston Ventures.

Goldman said the parking lot would be an important selling point to lure in a restaurant for the first floor, a requirement the city imposed to keep the historic building publicly accessible.

New Boston Ventures has wanted this from the start.  They had wanted to configure this space in July 2008, when the bypass road was nearing completion and had gone to high-level officials in MassHighway (now MassDOT.)

The neighbors will be involved;  my colleague Charlie Reardon was at that meeting and suggested parking for the senior housing (45 St. Peter/109 Bridge) across from the Jail.

People in my building have long wanted more parking, and one neighbor of mine even proposed the greenspace as parking lot well before Charlie did.

This is nuts. 

That greenspace changes everything about the new road, moderating its influence and making a natural anchor and focal point for the immediate St. Peter St. neighborhood.  It won’t be long before New Boston looks at the plans again and decides they want the whole area for parking.  Who could be against parking?

But despite what the Salem News thinks in its editorial, this will happen anyway.  No one wants to lose the restaurant, or incur anger from senior citizens.  (And if they did lose the restaurant we can count on the Salem News to blame the city anyway.)

Stranding Seniors

I’ve written before about transportation for seniors and the disabled.  Another story came out over the holidays.

The Globe profiles one Marblehead resident:

It’s the spur-of-the-moment trips that June Casler misses most, the spontaneous decision to catch a 7 p.m. movie or to pick up a coveted book at the library. The octogenarian hung up her car keys for good when she moved from western New York to Marblehead in June because she felt that negotiating busy, unfamiliar streets could be distracting and dangerous.

Casler has since discovered that the local Council on Aging van doesn’t run nights or weekends and requires 24-hour advance notice. She doesn’t want to burden her son and daughter-in-law, who live nearby, for rides during the van’s off hours. But neither does she want to end up like one of her 90-year-old friends who could barely see but was still behind the wheel - until her family called police to intercede.

We have been heading for a collision for some time.  We’ve built our society around the car and deemphasized other options so that the car and its needs have become a massive hidden subsidy imposed on cities, towns and the state.

At the same time, the cohort of seniors that remember life without easy transport—the car life—is dwindling.  My late mom remembers streetcars, trains, walking, buses and even horses.  Seniors today and those soon-to-be-seniors have few such memories and baby boomers have none:  They have always enjoyed life with the car.

I wonder, as well, if the “nuclear family” philosophy of the boomers has contributed.  I heard any number of stories in high school of students reaching 18 and their parents showing them the door, politely or not. 

How can one square this with the sentiment I’ve also heard over and over, that “your kids owe you” to look after you in your old age?  Many adult children are scattered across the country, since mobility is valued, preferred and even necessary for some.

There will be another attack of outrage when a senior is involved in a traffic accident, but I fear we’re not going to do much.  Easy to be mad at some poor 80-year old that runs down a kid, but hard to admit that your city’s development philosophy is flawed or that we’ve been trying to segregate our seniors for 50 years and it doesn’t work. 

Real resolution of this would be expensive.  So we won’t see progress.

Truthfully, seniors have every incentive to dodge the eye doctor and drive no matter what.  It’s the only way they’re really independent.

Ms. Casler took the high road;  I just wonder if she’s regretting it.

First post and first storm of 2010

First storm of 2010 is continuing as I speak.  5.5” as of noon today.  Construction continues at the Salem Jail and the building is just about enclosed.  New windows have already been installed.  The building looks better and better every day.

Update:  9” as of 11 AM Sunday the 3rd.  The snow is forecast to continue into the evening.  There could be 10”-12” by Monday morning.

Christmas with my “godchildren”

Katie Harris:  “O Hai, I can has an uncle?”

For years now, I’ve known my chairman, Jack Harris, and even lived in his building.  He adopted two special needs girls.  They insist on being my surrogate nieces whenever I visit.  Katie, the younger, paid her regards moments after I took my coat off and sat down!

Emily Harris, the older sister, gets a present here.  She’s not as easy to photograph.

I much prefer a quiet Christmas with few gifts, but Jack and Donna gave me one that seems appropriate:

Note the size.  OMG.  I don’t even have a TV at the moment since I had to wait for the work in my apartment to be done before shopping.

But time with friends and family is my favorite time.  Even if they’re “surrogate” family.

Snowy Sidewalk Survey

Commenting on my last post, Rick asks that “they” clear the sidewalks, since he almost got killed walking the dog.

I concur.  Totally.

The problem comes when “they” are defined.  The current Salem ordnance calls for sidewalks to be cleared by the property owner.

In the photo above, Market Basket owns this sidewalk since they own and manage the supermarket and its associated parking lot that also includes Target.  The adjacent strip mall and Shaw’s are owned by someone else.

I give Market Basket credit for digging out a path, though I still had considerable trouble getting on the bus after food shopping this morning.  Last week’s news that Market Basket will work with the MBTA on a bus stop at the store is welcome, but as I had feared all year, it may likely come too late for this winter.

Across the street, the bus shelter has not been plowed:

There are sidewalks that are owned by the city, sidewalks owned by the state (like Salem Depot), and sidewalks owned by all sorts of private homeowners.

Our only recourse now as a city is to beg all the private property owners with public-facing sidewalks (which is nearly everyone) to clear their sidewalks out front.

Property owners, though, can’t only think of their own lots:

This is the Unitarian church at Ash St., next door to my building.

Its lot has been plowed and there’s a pathway, obscured by the snowbank, from the lot up to Ash St. off the image to the left.

What’s missing?

There is a public sidewalk at Bridge St.  It is completely blocked.  I use this path to get to Salem Depot when I am running late (inevitable on a morning like this) walking through my parking lot to get to Bridge St.

I had to walk in the street for half a block until the Federal St. condos, whose sidewalks were cleared out as usual, where I could re-enter the sidewalk and head for the Washington/Bridge intersection to cross to the station as I usually do.

The contractor who cleared out the church’s lot is on the hook for this.

Now multiply this by all the properties you might cross with your dog, whether it’s Federal St., Chestnut St. or Washington Sq.

The only bright spot, if anything, is that I am regularly in contact with Jason Silva (the mayor’s chief of staff) to monitor “my” block, the St. Peter/Church/Brown St. area that covers two downtown parking lots.  That still leaves the two churches (St. Peter’s and St. John’s) and their rectories, 10 Federal, Museum Place, my building (owned by the state) and the Salem Jail.

Not easy and not fun.  Yet we go through this each and every winter, complain about it, and do the same thing next year.

First Big Storm, Winter 2009-2010

A lone car waits for the light at the Veteran’s Riverway.   I measured 7-1/2” outside my apartment at 8 AM this morning.

Summary of Salem Commission on Disabilities, December 2009

 

[Due to a technical problem, we lost the audio for the December meeting and cannot air it on SATV this month.   This is a summary of what was discussed at the meeting]

The Commission on Disabilities met December 15th, 2009, 4 PM at SATV.  Present: Jack Harris, Mike Taylor, Debra Lobsitz, Andy LaPointe, David Moisan, Charlie Reardon, Jean Levesque and David Tracht.

• Jason [the Mayor’s chief-of-staff] met with officials from the MBTA and Market Basket to discuss rerouting the 450 and 456 buses to go through the parking lot.  Market Basket was very supportive and is going to try to make this work.  No timetable was given, but we are optimistic something will happen soon.
• Project Lifesaver:  Andy LaPointe has good news:  The funding for Project Lifesaver is set and officers of the Salem PD will be getting training in mid-December (21st-22nd).  The public announcement for Project Lifesaver will be given after the first of the year.
• Congress & Derby:  As noted elsewhere, the traffic signals at Congress & Derby have been approved.
• “Sober House”/St. Jean’s (Salem & Dow Sts.).  The owner has extended the completion date for his project to July 2010.  The 2nd floor is supposed to be single family residential, with 1st floor retail.  However, according to the city inspector, there are four (unrelated) people living there so the owner is in violation, currently.
• 4 First St.:  A meeting has been set for Thursday, December 17th, 10 AM with Tom St. Pierre, Jack Harris and the management company at 4 First St. to try to get the access problem in the parking lot (no curbcut to the lot from the building entrance) straightened out.  This has been ongoing for some time.
• Bypass Road (now Veteran’s Way) bikepath:  Two of four ADA-compliant access paths have been constructed;  Jack will do a site visit with Dave Knowlton to verify this and check on the other two pathways.  The Commission appreciates this and only wishes it were done during original construction, since it was more expensive to fix afterwards.
• Highland Ave. Audible Signals and crosswalks:  Andy is going to send a registered letter to the state (cc’d to city engineer Dave Knowlton) about two concerns of his (and ours).  Several audible signals on Highland Ave., and one on Loring Ave. (Rt. 1A) @ Omega Pizza, are too soft (low volume) to be heard above traffic.  Also, sidewalk access at Highland Ave @ Ravenna Ave. was very rough and unfinished and not really a sidewalk or curb cut at all.  Andy visited the site with Tom Muxie several months back, and will revisit the area again before sending his letter.
• The Commission has decided to cancel our January meeting, since it falls on the same day of the state’s special election for the US Senate and several commissioners will be working at the polls.  All business will be deferred to February, but the Commission will keep the public informed of any developments through the city’s web site. 
• Tentative for February:  Meg Robertson of the State Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired will be our guest, along with Salem  police captain John Jodoin.  Main discussion will be the right turn on red law as it affects blind pedestrians.
• Next meeting:  February 16th, 2009, 4 PM, Salem Access Television, 285 Derby St.