17Jul
On: July 17, 2017

At last Friday’s Development & Historic Preservation Committee we were excited to welcome professionals from Howard Stein Hudson who were making an interim report on their efforts to put together a Complete Streets sensitive parking study for the Greater Ashmont Main Street commercial district.  Our contract with them is being funded by an Impact & Innovation Grant from the Boston Main Streets Foundation, as well as a generous donation from Trinity Financial.  Additional donations up to a total of $3000 are welcome to assist us underwriting the total cost of their work.

HSH did a walking tour of the neighborhood with Greater Ashmont MS and reps invited from each neighborhood association on May 22.  Since then, they have worked to identify Issues & Opportunities we face, which were discussed with the committee on Friday.  There full presentation is available online here as well.  Our discussion lead to a few additions, and well as editing out a few potential suggestions that did not fit the local context (for example, given our resident parking permit system, the group felt it was not productive to look at permit parking for staff at the local elementary school and that the larger concern there was a smooth drop off/pickup for those arriving by car or bus or walking).  At this point, with our feedback on their presentation in mind, they will be preparing a final detailed summary of the current situation and recommendations to be considered by Greater Ashmont Main Street, the City, the MBTA, and any local civic associations interested is taking their own close look.

At the moment, we think that final report will be available by the end of July, and we would look to have them presented for the first time in detail at our Friday, September 8, Development & Historic Preservation committee meeting, at 8am in our Greater Ashmont Main Street office (1914 Dorchester Ave (REAR), Dorchester, MA).  Please mark your calendars now if these conversations are of interest to you. We’d love to have you join in!