Holding Pattern for Future of Westwood Station
Channel 5 ran this story comparing the booming success around the opening of Whole Foods at Legacy Place in Dedham to the weedfields of Westwood Station. You can't deny the contrast is stark. But before anyone draws too many "lessons" from this, I'd suggest we observe the full impact of Legacy Place and consider this IS what a vastly scaled-back Westwood Station could have been. It is a great shopping center to service the neighboring towns.
The vision behind Westwood Station was much more than that. It was a live/work/play community on a transit line designed to be everything, all-at-once. Bad timing for such a grandiose plan. But while we wait for the economy to turn around, let's watch Legacy Place and think about what would complement, rather than compete against a formula that is working well for what it was designed to do.
Comments
not so fast...
The enthusiasm around Legacy Place is understandable because it's new and exciting but I foresee some major problems there. For all the talk of a "lifestyle" development it's nothing more than a strip mall shaped into a rectangle. You have to drive down into the "the bowl" to park and even at this early juncture with few of the stores open the traffic is a mess. During holiday shopping this place is going be be downright miserable. And I shudder to think about how emergency vehicles are going to navigate through there. I'm curious about what public opinion will be in 18 months or so after the development is firmly established.
Westwood Station proposed something entirely different and, in my opinion, much more forward looking.
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John Craine
50 Blue Hill Drive
There have been a couple
There have been a couple comments lately which reference the concept/design for Westwood Station vs. Legacy Place. Let's not forget that the design which was approved for WS was not the design residents were originally told we would have. During the early stages of development, when by-laws and zoning regs were being altered, we were told we would have a 'pedestrian friendly' shopping area with a few nice restaurants and small upscale shops--Newbury St. was even used as a comparison. Once the zoning regulations were approved at town meeting the design suddenly exploded to the 57,000 cars per day/big box store/hotel site monstrosity we ended up with (even if it wasn't/isn't financeable).
So although Legacy Place may be far from perfect at least Dedham residents had a transparent process that delivered what people were told they could expect. That's more that we can say here.
Plenty of Grass for the GREAT WHITE ELEPHANT
You can not have a transparent town until you elect residents that are willing to be transparent. Maybe Dave will run for something, I am sure he would keep residents up to date on what's going on so we feel like we matter. This is the year for residents who want to run for office to go for it. I don't think the BOS backing a candidate is going to hold that much weight this year. They can organize with the School Committee, EDAB,planning board and the other boards to push their candidates but I believe residents will want to see change.
This is the year the good old boy network gets disassembled.
No more blame on the economy for the failure of Westwood Station. We as residents got greedy and bit off more than we could chew. Our elected officials wanted us to vote a certain way and we did.
The question is are we going to continue to wait for the Great WHITE ELEPHANT or change the zoning for the MUOD to force a smaller development to be built. Remember CCF does not have all the time in the world to start going vertical.