The Zombie Grows Stronger

People have been asking about recent construction activity about the Zombie Mall.  Yes, the New York City-based RD Management is putting some money into the property and has landed two new tenants.  Who are they?

According to this document, Planet Fitness and Big Lots are moving in.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!  Oh boy!  A gym and a downmarket discounter!  Hooray, hooray!  Billerica Center is on the comeback trail!

Er, I don’t know if either of these two tenants helps anyone.  We already have our share of gyms in town, including the nearby, still-new Fit Results, which is a clever re-use of a building a few steps away from the end of Tower Farm Road.

And the Big Lots does make you scratch your head, doesn’t it?  What do you suppose KMart and the Dollar Tree think about a fellow tenant in the Zombie stealing their Billerica downmarket discount dry goods market share?  If you have some cheap junk to buy, which of these three stores would you choose?  You can throw Burlington Coat Factory on that pile, too, which has a little merchandise overlap as well.

And doesn’t it make you wonder, that if all of these stores can survive in the same mall, that WalMart — the downest of all downmarket discounters — is keeping a close watch on this market?  How close might they be to making a play for a property in the area?

This, folks, is what worries me.  The stores you attract is a reflection of what you are as a town, like looking in the mirror.  And junk begets junk.  Just look at Route 1 in Suagus.  Or to a lesser degree, Route 38 in Wilmington.  This is the direction our historic town center is going, and it will keep going that way unless we take control.

We better hurry.

Vacancies Abound in Town Meeting

How does a “political hotbed” town like Billerica follow up a pathetic 13.0% showing at the polls?  By leaving scads of Town Meeting seats empty.

In a letter to Town Meeting Representatives this week, the City Clerk reports that there are a jaw-dropping 30 seats empty, or 12.3% of the total 243 seats.  There is at least one seat open in every precinct except #5:

• 4 vacancies in Precinct 1
• 2 vacancies in Precinct 2
• 4 vacancies in Precinct 3
• 4 vacancies in Precinct 4
• 2 vacancies in Precinct 6
• 1 vacancies in Precinct 7
• 1 vacancies in Precinct 8
• 2 vacancies in Precinct 9
• 4 vacancies in Precinct 10
• 6 vacancies in Precinct 11

Last year there were 25 seats empty after the election.

To be fair, Town Moderator Gil Moreira told me that this is not too out of the ordinary for the last 10 years or so.  Fair enough, but it is still sad that we can’t come up with enough warm bodies out of 20,000+ registered voters to fill a couple hundred seats.

The good news is this gives an opportunity to anyone who wants to grab a TM seat without doing any of the paperwork or getting the 10 signatures.

So if you are within the sound of my voice and you do not already hold a seat in TM, please attend the preliminary meeting next Thursday, April 28 at 7:30 at Town Hall.  Attend your precinct’s caucus and ask for a seat.

If any of the items I’ve written about in this space interest you, this is your opportunity to help.  We may have nights where only 170 or so TMRs bother to show up, so every vote counts that much more.

If you want your town to be better, government has to be better, and that starts with curious, intelligent, positive people serving on Town Meeting.

Thank you, and I’ll see you there.

Town Center Visioning SWOT Analysis

Things have been busy around the blob recently.  After the visioning session, there has been lots of press.  I gave a telephone interview to Evan Lips of the Lowell Sun with my 3-year-old daughter hanging on my leg — no easy task.  (Yesterday the Sun ran an editorial in support of the visioning process.)  And I’ve written material for this space and for the Minuteman (see Thursday’s edition).  So I apologize for not getting this to you sooner.

As you know, on March 31 Town Manager John Curran hosted an open public meeting.  Our regional planning agency, NMCOG, was kind enough to attend a night meeting and present some material to us as well as to take us through a SWOT analysis.  The meeting was taped by BATV, and you can watch it on their outstanding web site any time you want.

There are 71 names on the sign-in sheet.  An impressive turnout on a cold, snowy night in late March.  NMCOG sent meeting notices to the mailboxes of all Town Meeting Representatives.  Most of the people in attendance were TMRs, but not all.  I expect attendance will grow as word of the visioning spreads via press coverage and word of mouth.  The more people that attend — on both sides of the issue — the better chance we have of building a consensus on a vision for the Center.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Curran told the crowd that this was not the time to debate the merits of additions to the zoning code.  Instead it was a brainstorming session.  In the brainstorming, every idea expressed is recorded and no speaker should fear being rebutted, ridiculed, or shouted down.  This is important because this is exactly the opposite of a Town Meeting debate, where people pick a side (pro or con) and spend their time at the microphone belittling the opposing viewpoint.  This is fine when trying to reach a quick decision via a vote at the end of such a debate.  But visioning is an open-ended process in which 71 people with as many different opinions walk into the room.  The product of this first meeting was for everyone to understand the various points of view and to get an idea for what is important to most people.  Another way to say this is “taking the temperature” of the room.  If 71 people walk out of the room more aligned in terms of goals and objectives, the meeting was a success.

Which I believe it was.  As you’ll read there were some nattering nabobs of negativity in the room, but that is par for the course with any public meeting on any subject under the sun.  Still, I saw a lot of nodding heads and other approving body language as people offered differing but generally constructive comments at the microphone.

Beverly Woods, executive director of NMCOG, was the second speaker.  She revealed the results of a grant-funded study that looked at land use, public infrastructure, parking, and traffic in the center.  I’ll summarize her comments.

Land use

Most of the center (61%) is used for commercial/office.  She did not break “commercial” down into retail, office, restaurants, fast food, etc., which I would have liked, but I think we know how much retail we have.  I can’t think of more than a few offices in the entire center (one lawyer, one real estate, one eye doctor, an art studio, an accountant… did I miss any?).  This breakdown is important because retail is a very high generator of traffic, and we need to know these numbers once we get to the traffic discussion.

Key stat: Only 3 parcels in the entire center, amounting to a tiny acre of land, is undeveloped.

Parking

This issue surprisingly emerged during the Fall 2009 TM debate, with people telling the “no” microphone that they were afraid there wouldn’t be enough after redevelopment.  Well, those folks can put their fears aside.  NMCOG counted 2,300 parking spaces in the study area.

The barber on Andover Road took exception to mention of the spaces behind his shop, saying that they were private property and should not be included in the inventory.  (This comment may have prompted the Anthony Ventresca “hands off my land” letter to the Minuteman.)  He is right, of course, that no one can touch those parking spaces.  But it does help us to know how many parking spaces we have so we can get a handle not only on how much total parking there is to support the retailers and allay the supply fears, but also to know how much impervious land area we have.  This in an important part of solving the flooding and erosion problems downhill, not to mention the glut of hardscape and shortage of usable green space.

Key Stat: 2300 parking spaces translates to about 20 acres of parking lot.  If we traded just one acre for, say, a park, imagine what an upgrade that would be.

Traffic

Traffic is evaluated by average delay suffered per car at an intersection.  This delay, reported in seconds, is then translated to a letter grade, just like school: A through F.  Traffic engineers call this “level of service” (LOS).  NMCOG analyzed the intersections in the study area for each of the morning and afternoon rush hours.

They took a look at safety as well.  They found 110 crashes in the study area in the last 3 years.

Key stat: None of the intersections came in at LOS E of F.  In other words, traffic is not as bad in the center as we think it is.

You may remember that I am a professional traffic engineer, so I get paid to think about traffic and solve problems it causes.  When people say “traffic is bad,” they can mean one of several things:

• It takes too long to get through an intersection
• The lines of cars waiting at an intersection are too long
• The intersection is dangerous
• The intersection is confusing
• I have to stop at all the red lights at successive intersections
• Cars are going too slow
• Cars are going too fast
• There are too many trucks
• It’s too scary to cross the street on foot or ride a bike

In other words, just because the LOS numbers came out OK, that doesn’t mean the traffic isn’t “bad.”  It just means we have to dig deeper into the traffic problem and define exactly why we think it’s bad, and then find appropriate solutions to those problems.

Public Infrastructure

NMCOG took a close look at sidewalks and found that — surprise! — there aren’t many.  And the one we have are too narrow to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and are crumbling.

Ms. Woods also showed us a rendering of improvements to the roads abutting the common.  She said it had been approved by MassDOT.  Although the crowd was eager to talk about it, she did not spend much time explaining what the plan was, where it came from, how old it was, or when it would be constructed.  I am working on getting these answers for y0u.  I believe that this is an old plan and not ready for bid.  Nonetheless it’s clear that the visioning participants are very curious about this plan and so I hope NMCOG allocates some time on the next session’s agenda so we can talk about this work and other road improvements that are (or are not) in the pipeline.

SWOT Analysis

Jay Donovan took us through the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).  It was the audience participation portion of the program.

This approach was perfect for 2 reasons:

1. It gave people a chance share their vision — and maybe vent a little frustration, too.  In my professional experience I’ve found this really helps a restless crowd get some of the emotion out of the way.
2. It provided a structured and mostly objective way of looking at their own town.  It’s not often people can be objective about the place they love and may have lived their whole life.

Additionally, the spirit of the exercise was the same as a brainstorming session.  People were free to say whatever they wanted without worrying about rebuttal or ridicule.

The comments were sorted by the 4 SWOT categories at the meeting, but I will organize them here by type.

Traffic

This issue was raised as often as the mall, maybe more so.

• Fix the roads around the common.  Trucks can’t make the turns.  Intersections are confusing.
• Ped safety.  Too scary to cross on foot.  No WALK signs or buttons to push to stop traffic.  Sidewalks are missing.  Build ped bridges.
• Bike safety.  Unsafe to ride a bike.
• Too much car traffic.  (Although another person said businesses like traffic — more traffic = more customers)
• Clear up the congestion
• Create gateways and canopies

Zombie Mall

Took the prize for most mentions during “weaknesses.”

• Ugly, hideous, moldly, run-down.
• Parking lot full of potholes.
• Stores are scuzzy and there aren’t enough shopping choices
• Force the mall to make improvements
• Buy the mall property and develop it ourselves

Architecture

This has not been an important subject for the town center in the past, which is too bad.  A suburb — especially a town center — can have nice architecture.  A historic center like ours should require buildings made of natural materials and gables, not cinder block and flat roofs.  Dave Kinsella, and PB member and an architect, made this point several times.

• Buildings in the historic part of the center are beautiful and should be preserved.
• Buildings in the Zombie area are ugly, out of place, and falling apart in some cases.

Economic Development

The center can and should be a critical piece of our economic growth as the economy recovers.

• Not enough shopping choices.  Few offices.
• Billerica residents are forced to spend money outside of town because many services are not available here.
• Need more restaurants.  Outdoor seating would be very nice.

Open Space

As the center has developed over the years, we have chosen parking lot over open space, which is a shame.  We have a chance to correct that now.

• Common is hard to use because is is surrounded by busy road.  Do not make the Common smaller.
• Need to create more usable open space.
• Erosion issues

Quality of life and services

• The historic center has a mix of uses.  Residences and offices are walking distance from services in the center.
• Special events and community resources  (parades, concerts, playgrounds) are valuable.
• Overhead wires (power, telephone, etc.) are ugly.
• Senior center is an asset, but needs to be expanded.
• Bring in doctors’ and dentists’ offices.
• Prevent sprawl.  Don’t let Boston Road become Daniel Webster Highway or Route 38 in Wilmington.

Dot Exercise

Each participant was given a set of stickers, or dots.  The dots were color-coded and represented each person’s first, second, and third priorities.  Comments made during the SWOT analysis were recorded on giant post-in notes on the wall.  Participants were invited to “spend” their dots, sticking them next to comments that were most important to them.  This is a type of budgeting exercise that has tremendous value because:

1. It teaches the demanding citizen (or reminds them) that they can’t have everything.
2. It shows the demanding citizen what all the other citizens are demanding, and that often members of a community want different things.
3. That working to together and making compromises is necessary if anything is going to get done.

The Human Raincloud

And now I have to spend some time writing about Mike Rosa, who is the chairman of our board of selectman, the highest ranking elected person in town.  He did attend, which I applaud.  He did not come to listen and learn, which is a shame.  He waited until the “threat” part of the session, and said that the overlay district is a threat to the town.  First of all, John Curran was careful to say in his opening remarks that the purpose of the session was not to debate the merits of zoning or anything else.  Second, he made two comments have have been debunked many times before:

1. New development will put a strain on all services — water, sewer, police, fire, schools.  Generally speaking, sprawl costs towns more — especially infrastructure like pipe and road — because of economies of scale.  Many books have been written about this.  Start with my bookshelf or type “land use planning” in the subject box of the library catalog.  And in particular, most development in the center will replace some existing development, which may very well represent a net decrease of use of town services.
2. The Mall is private property and there is nothing we can do about it.  But the whole purpose of land use planning, having a Planner on staff, a Planning Board, and a zoning code is to shape what we want (and where).  Nearly all growth is private, but it must follow the framework of the zoning code, which belongs to us, the people of Billerica.

Next Steps

NMCOG will analyze the distribution of our “dots” and tell us what the participants of the first session want the most.  Then they will schedule another visioning session within the next several weeks, hopefully.

Visioning — Our Summer Project

Candidates for Selectmen ran on taxes and a few other minor issues this year.  In response, the voters stayed away in droves to the tune of a record-breaking 87% non-voting rate.  Have we learned that Billerica citizens have other things on their minds this year?

I hope so.  There are many people in town and in the press covering the town that think that Town Center Visioning is what people will be talking about this summer instead.

Today Evan Lips wrote about Visioning in today’s Lowell Sun.  It was front page news above the fold in last Thursday’s Minuteman.  And here is the story at Billerica.org.

Next door at A Forgotten Man, Rick is moderating a lively debate about whether the process really is pure evil.

Speaking of community building, here is a nice story about a man in Lawrence who is organizing a trash cleanup day in his city.  Way to go, Anthony Nunez, who is 24 (and a mechanical engineer — one more example of an engineer trying to make a difference).  He put it on Facebook, and 400 people signed up.  Four hundred!  I’m betting even more participate this Saturday.  Does Lawrence have more pride than we do?  If we had a clean up day here, would we get so many people to show up?  Litter and other debris, as much as vacant and dilapidated buildings, gives people a sick feeling of blight about their town.  Would a clean-up day organized by a Democrat or a blow-in get support from Republicans and townies, for example?  Or does the idea of making the place look nice even divide people?

One last word on voter turnout.  Evan Lips’ story on this is terrific and worth reading.  Check out our Town Clerk (Shirley Schult), who just won a reelection bid herself, talk about the poor turnout.  Very strong language (“abysmal”) from someone who is both elected and staff.   She pulls no punches, calling out townspeople for not doing their civic duty.  Reminds me of newly elected Selectmen Accomando’s comments, which were very similar.

Something is going on here, folks, and and it’s not good.  To add to the theories given by experts in the article, I want to add a quickly eroding sense of community.  We don’t talk to each other face to face anymore.  We have no civic organizations, no neighborhood associations, no “hyper-local” government (as some people call it).  Part of the reason for this is we have no meeting places.  Our only real civic space in the Town Center is the playground behind O’Connors.  I can’t count the Town Common, as nice as it may be, because it’s too loud to have a conversation there amid the 3A truck traffic and besides, it’s not safe to cross the street to get there.  The only time this space is used us during special events when the police are needed to help people cross the street.  The library is great, but you can’t talk there.  I might give you Rick’s Cafe, but is that really the best we can do?

We Get Letters

After very little activity on the opinion page of our local papers leading up to the election, this past few days saw an uptick in letters the editor.

In today’s Minuteman, Joan Parcewski laments the poor voter turnout, and is quite animated about it.  Worth reading.

But the feature today was the letter from a pal of the blob, Anthony Ventresca.  In it, he calls last Thursday’s Town Center Visioning Session “pure evil.”  That’s a direct quote, folks.  His problem is that it somehow robs individuals of property rights.

Our buddy Anthony seems like an expert in the Constitution, which is great, but he clearly has no understanding of what zoning is or how it works.  Zoning itself limits the options an individual has when developing his land.  There are a few places in the US that have no zoning at all (Houston, for example), where you can put just about whatever you want anywhere you want.  Trash dump next to a school?  No problem!

If Anthony has a problem with zoning, he is welcome to submit an article to Town Meeting dissolving the zoning code.  I’d sign it, just for the entertainment value of seeing how FinCom and TM would react to it.

Now here’s the giant irony of Anthony’s letter.  An overlay zoning district of any kind would give all landowners in the district more rights than they have today.  Following Anthony’s logic, one would assume he would be in favor of that.

And in the Lowell Sun, a letter pining after Home Depot at the Billerica Mall.  Yankee Doodle, Thomas Ditson, Tom Glavine, Sportstown USA, and the imaginary Home Depot mall.  Are these the things that define us as a town in 2011? Really?

Billerica desperately needs to update its identity.  Now.

Nostalgia for a strip mall that never was, citizens who think democracy is evil, seven of eight people registered don’t bother to vote.  The wheels are coming off, friends.

Bedsheet Election

What if you held an election and no one came?

The results are in and the winners are… hello?  Anyone out there?  Is this thing on?

A few days ago I complained that this year’s local election was too much about money — namely, taxes.  Again.  And that despite the fact that this year’s most notable issue was probably going to be town center visioning (and not the budget or property taxes or water bills or anything else with a dollar sign in front of it), not much time was spent on it during the campaign.

But this question is moot when voters don’t care about any issue at all.

In the Billerica’s 2011 local election, turnout was abysmal.  There’s no nice way to put it.  A grand total of 3,214 ballots were cast.  We have 24,666 voters registered.  This amounts to a 13.0% turnout rate.  Experts were projecting at least 15%. How slow was it at the polls, which were open for 12 hours?  People trickled in at a rate of about 24 voters per hour per precinct, on average.

Pathetic.

As for the candidates, the newspaper reported that winners Dave Gagliardi collected 36.5% of the vote and Bob Accomando received 34% of the vote.  This is technically true, but another way of looking at it is that 22,667 people registered in Billerica did not vote for Gagliardi (91.9%), and 22,803 people did not vote for Accomando (92.4%).  Hard to feel like the whole town is behind you with numbers like that.  They look even worse when you divide by the entire population of the town, which is about 40,000.

If Accomando was celebrating being elected to his second term as selectmen, his excitement was tempered by disappointment.  From the Lowell Sun story:

Accomando, who stood outside yesterday from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., called the turnout “terrible.”"I think these elections are more important than the presidential elections,” he said. “We affect people’s lives instantly, whereas the president can make a change and we won’t feel it for a few years.”

For a leader who doesn’t say much, I’m glad Bob expressed himself.  It shows he does care about the health of democracy in his town.

What does this sad turnout tell us?  Some possibilities:

• Voters are not as angry about property taxes as we think they are.  If the voters are fist-pounding mad about being taxed, overtaxed, and taxed some more — as the Tea Party movement was supposed to prove — then where are they all?  Do you really mean to tell me that alleged day-in-day-out recession/unemployment angst doesn’t push proud Americans to take 5 minutes to vote once a year?
• Voters have campaign promise fatigue.  We have been listening to hundreds of candidates at all levels (local, state, federal) tell us they are going to cut our taxes and not one has succeeded.  Paul Marasco centered his campaign around our 75% property tax bill bump since 2000.  That’s a lot, but he learned that 23,052 voters don’t care and therefore didn’t vote for him.
• The races — maybe the candidates — were a major snore.  First, when you have 3 people running for 2 seats (the case in both the BOS and  PB races) you have a 67% chance of winning just by showing up.  And the BOS race featured 3 likable fellows, none of whom said or did anything remotely offensive during the campaign.  Very little to get us out of our bedsheets and into the car for the short drive (or walk) on a nice day to the voting places.  The election had zero buzz to speak of.  I heard more people talking about the Town Center Visioning public meeting, which was 2 days before the election.
• Billerica lacks a sense of community.  As you know I think this stems from having no central “meeting place” — an area where people randomly run into friends and acquaintances and talk local issues.  This is much more important to having a cohesive community most people realize.  You think standing on the Town Common beneath a campaign sign waving at anonymous cars speeding by really gets people excited about participating in democracy?

My wife and I voted about an hour before the polls closed, tired from hosting a lively party for our three-year-old.  A few other leftover thoughts after we left the mostly-empty Kennedy School:

• Do the people of Billerica not read the news?  People across the Middle East are revolting against their tyrannical leaders, dying for a chance to be free.  They, along with millions of people in countless other countries have never voted in a real election.  Everybody knows Americans take the privilege of voting for granted, but isn’t that getting more and more embarrassing with each world news headline like this we read?
• What lack of respect it shows poll workers.  They are all volunteers, most of whom are retired.  Most work all day.  They have 4 elections to work in 2012.  At what point will they throw up their hands and say, “to hell with it?”
• Our election was on a Saturday.  Not many people had the excuse of being too busy with work.  How bad would turnout have been if our election had been on a Tuesday?  What if it rained?
• Are we really a “political town,” which we love to think of ourselves as?  We’ll see as election numbers roll in from surrounding towns.

Okay, a sentence or two about the results themselves.  Not great for the visioning effort.  Gagliardi, who opposes zoning upgrades, defeated Marasco, who was in favor.  And Pat Fleming — a historic supporter of 40B projects — beat strong anti-40B candidate Al Ramos. Fleming takes the “it’s private property, they can do whatever they want” attitude to land development, while Ramos supported master planning and Smart Growth.

Last word goes to a former selectman, also from the Sun story:

At the Vining Elementary School polls, former Selectman Francis “Fraz” Fraine was also disappointed with the turnout.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “You can’t blame the weather. Usually you’ll get around 3,700 coming out at least. This is a political town. What we’re seeing is unbelievable.”

Vision for the Center Kicks Off

Last night NMCOG, our regional planning agency, hosted the first town center visioning meeting at Town Hall.  Town Manager John Curran introduced the presenters from the agency, professional planners Jay Donovan and Beverly Woods.  About 50 people attended the meeting on a cold, snowy night.

Woods presented some facts about existing traffic conditions and parking supply.  She also covered land uses as they are today.  It was no surprise that 61% of the land is used for commercial/retail, but I didn’t know that only 3 parcels — 1 acre in total — are vacant.

Next Donovan took us through a SWOT analysis.  SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  He spent about 20 minutes on each, collecting comments from attendees, which were recorded on giant post-in notes.

Later, all attendees were invited to participate in a “dot exercise.”  Each person was given a set of colored stickers (the dots), each color representing a priority (first, second, third, etc.).  Big post-its with the SWOT comments recorded on them were posted on the wall.  People then “spent” their dots, sticking them next to comments that were important to them.

This is a terrific exercise.  It gets people to take ownership of the problems an potential solutions.  It makes them feel involved and included in the process.  And maybe most importantly, it demonstrates the limitations we have and the need to set priorities.   We cannot solve all the issues the town center has right away, but the dot exercise tells us which ones are most important to citizens, and we will start with those.

Next week I will have more detail on the comments made.  In the meantime, with election day coming up Saturday, you may be curious to know who was in attendance.  All five selectmen were there, plus candidate Dave Gagliardi.  Dave did not offer any comments at the microphone, but has expressed opposition to upgrading the zoning code.  Bob Accomando, a candidate for reelection, also did not make any comments at the microphone.  The third candidate (also for reelection), Paul Marasco, made several constructive comments at the microphone and supports zoning upgrades.

Planning Board candidates Marti Mahoney (incumbent) and Al Ramos were in attendance and each made constructive comments.  Both are on record as being in favor of zoning upgrades.  Candidate Pat Fleming was not at the meeting.

The meeting was covered by BATV.  Check listings for repeat broadcasts if you missed it.