Claremont
“There needs to be a change in attitude on Pleasant Street. It is all about cars and trucks and where they want to go,” Jim Feleen, an attorney whose law office is on the first block of the street, off the south side of Opera House Square, said at a public forum on Wednesday. “It needs to be more pedestrian-oriented. The mindset now is vehicle-oriented.”
Among attendees, there appeared to be a slight preference for making the street one-way and creating angled parking, instead of the existing parallel parking spaces on both sides of the street.
About 30 people, including city officials, attended the discussion, which began with a presentation by Brian Colburn, a senior transportation manager with McFarland Johnson, the Concord consulting firm hired by the city.
He was joined by Johnathan Law, a senior associate with CRJA-IBI Group of Boston, who presented some streetscape ideas, including the sidewalk material and benches.
Colburn said the forum was the first step — conceptual design — in pre-engineering and design work for Pleasant Street, the city’s main street that cuts through the historic downtown. Decades ago, Pleasant Street was the primary shopping destination for the Upper Valley, with stores such as Montgomery Ward and J.J. Newberry. With the construction of the interstates and other development, including in Lebanon, Pleasant Street lost that title years ago and today is home to a mix of restaurants and retail shops that in many cases operate next to empty storefronts.
The focus of the discussion was on traffic and in particular, parking, which many believe has become a deterrent to attracting shoppers and allowing building owners to develop their second and third stories for residential housing.
There was a consensus to prohibit truck traffic while the idea of making the street one-way and creating diagonal parking on one side got mixed reviews.
“I think the top priority is figuring out the truck route,” said City Councilor Nick Koloski, who was also open to the idea of making the street, from Opera House Square to Glidden and School streets a pedestrian-way. “All the improvements won’t matter if the truck route is not changed.”
Gary Trottier, owner of the Union Block, agreed, saying big trucks run over the flowers in the square and create “excessive noise,” which is not conducive to an environment that wants to encourage more pedestrian traffic.
David Lucier, who owns Claremont Dry Goods and Spice Shop on Tremont Street off Opera House Square, thought closing Pleasant Street to all traffic at time when it is experiencing a rebirth could be a setback.
“I don’t want restrictive travel (on Pleasant Street). It is not established well enough as a business district. When that happens, maybe then (it can be one-way),” Lucier said.
Another resident, Jason Benware, said he does not believe making Pleasant Street one-way would dramatically affect people’s direction of travel. He said just about everyone coming from the south on Charlestown Road makes a right at Draper’s Corner and after several more turns takes Broad Street out to the stores on Washington Street. On the return, more than likely they will go up Tremont Street into Opera House Square and down Pleasant Street to get back on to Charlestown Road, he said.
Benware said he could support wider sidewalks, angled parking and one-way for Pleasant Street. Parallel parking is a challenge for many drivers, Benware said, and some drivers will give up if they cannot get into a space. Diagonal parking would be less of a deterrent to those who want to shop downtown, he said.
On the topic of parking, there was general agreement the city needs more of it and providing enough so building owners could create housing, it would improve the foot traffic downtown, Trottier said.
“I think residential housing is the key to downtown,” he added.
When Benware said he would like to see Pleasant Street with niche shops, restaurants and residential housing with tenants who could afford to support those establishments, Trottier said those type of tenants usually have cars and they need a place to park.
In one example of how the city’s rules make it hard to own a car and live downtown, Trottier said the overnight on-street winter parking ban “couldn’t be more unfair to a tenant wanting to live downtown.”
Colburn said the purpose of the forum was to develop a couple of concepts for a proposed redesign, with more forums planned in the coming weeks. A proposal is expecected to be presented in late April based on public input.
Updates can be found at www.rethinkpleasantstreet.com.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.
