There’s a lot more to like about Lowell
City Manager Bernie Lynch hosted his third Downtown Summit to a packed room at the Doubletree Hotel yesterday. For a guy who hasn’t reached his first anniversary as city manager, he wowed the audience with his vision for Lowell’s “Downtown Renaissance”—artfully displayed in a power-point presentation that included color photographs and artists’ renderings. Aside from the magic of seeing drawings of a trolley play structure for Mack Plaza, an intersection upgrade at Middle and Palmer Streets, and improved landscapes, sidewalks, street furniture, historic lamps, and pedestrian-friendly walkways on those old familiar streets—it was when he started to use words like: immediate, next week, and by the summer, that the spell was complete. (I imagined selling my old house with its clover-infested lawn for a downtown condo by the river.) The Mack Plaza play area will be in this summer. Next week, Central Street will be “beautified” with flowers, shrubs and street furniture, and work has begun to install more and better signs, especially at the city’s gateways. That’s not all. Yesterday’s plan was based on information gleaned at earlier summits. The first one was an introductory look at downtowns in general, with presentations from the Urban Land Institute and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. (One thing I remember about that summit was the consultant’s point about young people adding vibrancy to downtowns.) The second summit included stakeholders concerns about parking; lack of retail recruitment, retention, and marketing; bad traffic etc. The information from the earlier summits was addressed in the plan, from hiring consultants to help with marketing and getting new retailers based on demographics, to looking closely at traffic patterns and parking options. Some issues will be addressed immediately and some are long term. Funding for the immediate projects, which Manager Lynch estimated would cost “in excess of one million dollars,” is a combination of city and Lowell Plan funds with some anticipated state funding around transportation. Also discussed was the city’s revitalized marketing campaign, the use of both traditional and internet sources for self promotion, and the return of the old motto: There’s a lot to like about Lowell. Apparently, there’s going to be even more to like in the very near future.