House Approves Home Rule Petition

see what Kat has to say about her excitement upon learning Wegmans may be coming to Westwood...

I think her post is a great illustration of at least one way Westwood Station will attract people. Depending on your point of view, that's good or bad. If Kat hops in her car and drives here every week...well I guess we better get a flyover or something.

But my view has always been that the community that will be Westwood Station has the potential to attract people like Kat to want to live here. By increasing the desirability of Westwood for younger, creative professionals, it will encourage more businesses that need those kinds of people to locate here. A condo in Westwood Station might become a reasonable alternative to a flat in Allston or the new luxury condos going up in South Boston/Fort Point. The office space near the marketplace could be a good place for someone to start up a company. All of this has the potential to make Westwood a location that competes with Boston and Cambridge for talent.

As those people get older and start families, they are not going to be raising their 3 kids in a two bedroom condo and sending them to the Downey School. They will buy houses in Westwood so they can keep working either at the Station or commute in to Boston via the MBTA. They will discover what a great town this is and stay here.

I don't have marketing data to support this. People can argue and dispute this all day--maybe it's just not affordable for anyone to do what I envision. But that's what I see in the potential of Westwood Station--not just to give some tax revenue, but to create a strong future for all of us.

but according to the Wegmans website, their customers travel up to 30 miles to shop at their stores. Neighbors of the project are not worried about the commuters who come and stay the day, they are worried about the commuters who come for short periods and make multiple trips a week. If Westwood Station were just about Wegmans, there would not have been the publicity there was. However, Westwood Station is 1.5 Million Square Ft of retail alone which equals, according to the traffic consultants, 50,000 new cars a day. I believe those numbers were calculated before Wegmans was added to the list. There are a lot of people worried not about the organic produce in the aisles but the traffic plan in place to deal with the shoppers hunting out the produce. Hopefully, CCF will stay true to their word and address this issue in a successful manner.

It's great that this Wegmans issue is a dead issue now. Did Wegmans sign a lease today? The town,CCF and Wegmans have been waiting so long for the home rule petition to pass that I'm guessing Jay took a plane to NY to get the lease signed today? It will be interesting to see if there is any delay in Wegmans actually signing the lease.

My big question is does CCF have the funds now to move forward. Jay has his 2 anchor stores but I believe no money to build them.

Was CCF suppose to secure funding for this project by a certain date? I would like to see the contract between the town and CCF posted on this blog. I'm sure there is certain things the town has to live up to and the same goes with CCF.

I believe the town is prime for Change.
It's time for more transparency.
It's time for more diversity.
It's time for the residents to take back the town.

As another WNY transplant and former employee of Wegmans from my first years at college, let me just say that Wegmans is a wonderful company and their grocery stores are amazing. Think Whole Foods + Russo's in Watertown + Trader Joe's, yet completely affordable and pleasant. Prices and quality far surpass Stop & Shop and Shaw's. I find it hard to believe that Wegmans could become an IKEA-laden circus. I haven't lived in WNY for nearly 10 years but every time I go home to visit family, I always stop by Wegmans to stock up. I think this is a great development!