High side project: Time to stop complaining and move forward while we can afford to

Winchester is expe­ri­enc­ing a bit of a renais­sance right now.  Driving around the com­mu­ni­ty pro­vides some insight into this phenomenon.

College Street, French Avenue, and Euclid Avenue are all evi­dence where hous­es are being upgrad­ed and ren­o­vat­ed.  Even the road­work that has recent­ly been com­plet­ed on Maple Street and is still under­way on Broadway are indica­tive of the renew­al tak­ing place here.  Unfortunately, some of the work in progress has been detri­men­tal to busi­ness­es and there is lit­tle doubt that the nui­sance of traf­fic delays and detours has con­tributed to a good deal of angst amongst drivers.

But the very best part of this renais­sance has yet to begin.

The work sched­uled for the “high side” of Main Street is await­ing the go-ahead.  Money has been made avail­able for the work and the longer the com­mence­ment of that work is delayed, the less that can be accom­plished with the mon­ey avail­able.  Construction costs esca­late every day – almost astro­nom­i­cal­ly – so that fur­ther delays will sim­ply prove cost­ly in many respects.

Some local res­i­dents seem to think that the present steps along the high side con­sti­tute the “soul” of Winchester.  There is no ques­tion that those steps have been in exis­tence for a very long time, and long-term res­i­dents have become accus­tomed to them. 

But they were not always there, at least not in their cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion.  Some very old pho­tographs of that sec­tion of Main Street don’t show the steps as they now exist.  And they have changed over the inter­ven­ing years as well.  At one time there were more exten­sions in the steps, enclo­sures which housed access to low­er areas of some of the stores. Even the side­walk along the high side has been altered over the years. 

There are prob­a­bly very few peo­ple who can remem­ber when there were sev­er­al side­walk ele­va­tors there, lifts which were con­cealed under the walk and cov­ered with met­al doors which piv­ot­ed up as the lifts rose.  I can remem­ber, as a kid, the fun of just jump­ing up and down on those met­al doors just to hear the metal­lic “clang.”

The point is that the high side of Main Street has always been under­go­ing change, even if incre­men­tal­ly. Maybe most of those changes were pret­ty sub­tle but they occurred nev­er­the­less, and one would be hard-pressed to demon­strate that any of those changes result­ed in detri­ment to the community.

The high side has always been unfriend­ly to peo­ple with phys­i­cal restraints, either cop­ing with the mul­ti­tude of steps or nego­ti­at­ing the steep slope that starts south of the old JC Penney store and runs to Broadway.  That short stretch would prove daunt­ing to any­one in a wheelchair.

Until recent­ly, the only access to the high side for per­sons in wheel­chairs was either the ramp locat­ed just oppo­site Court Street or by going all the way up East Lexington Avenue to Church Alley. Even then, get­ting from the street lev­el to the side­walk at that point may have been prob­lem­at­ic due to the curb, not to men­tion an ardu­ous wheel­chair climb up that sec­tion of Lexington Avenue in the street.

And it should be not­ed that the ramp locat­ed near the Courthouse does not com­ply ful­ly with cur­rent require­ments of the ADA.

Planning for changes to the high side has been ongo­ing for decades.  In 1976 there was a down­town rede­vel­op­ment study done, and while it did not deal exten­sive­ly with mas­sive changes to the steps (it was pri­mar­i­ly direct­ed toward restora­tion and main­te­nance of the his­toric facades of the build­ings) it did address some mod­est changes to them.

Then, about eight years ago, a mas­ter plan for Main Street was devel­oped which was prob­a­bly the nucle­us of the plans that were pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic in May of last year.  At a pub­lic meet­ing, two pro­pos­als for ren­o­vat­ing the high side were dis­played.  Representatives of the design team were present to respond to ques­tions and receive com­ments and sug­ges­tions.  Forms were avail­able to the pub­lic to make addi­tion­al com­ments, which could then be incor­po­rat­ed into the plans if appropriate.

A few weeks ago the pub­lic was once again invit­ed to review the pro­pos­al.  That meet­ing was intend­ed to be explana­to­ry only, yet a good many atten­dees assumed that they were there to offer new sug­ges­tions and — it seemed — most­ly com­plaints.  Following that débâ­cle, indi­vid­u­als con­tin­ued to uti­lize social media to crit­i­cize the plan and to call for its delay.

It would seem that there are some who can only accept a plan for rede­vel­op­ment if it incor­po­rates all the sug­ges­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions that have been pre­sent­ed and oth­ers who appar­ent­ly don’t want to see any­thing done to the steps “because they are so good for watch­ing parades” or are just “so much of what makes Winchester unique.”

It’s true.  The steps are a unique char­ac­ter­is­tic of Winchester.  They are also unsafe and unsight­ly in many loca­tions.  And the plan that is pro­posed will also make the high side unique, just in a dif­fer­ent way.

There will be wider walks which will be of ben­e­fit to busi­ness­es there.  It will be safer because the loca­tions for cross­ing Main Street will be focused into spe­cif­ic cross­walk areas.  New steps will have to com­ply with cur­rent build­ing codes, unlike the steps in sev­er­al loca­tions now.  And there will still be parades down Main Street, with spec­ta­tors along the wider walk, sit­ting on the planters at street lev­el and on the sta­di­um-style steps that will be cre­at­ed oppo­site the Courthouse.

And there is good rea­son to believe that the pro­posed ren­o­va­tion of the high side may spur addi­tion­al busi­ness­es there, some of which may sim­ply be wait­ing to see if we are real­ly going to do this work.

As a retired design pro­fes­sion­al who spent forty years devel­op­ing plans for church­es, schools, office build­ings, hous­es and med­ical facil­i­ties, I can state emphat­i­cal­ly that I have nev­er seen a “per­fect” plan.  There have been good plans.  There have been great plans.  There has nev­er been a per­fect plan.

The plan for the high side of Main Street is a good plan.  It is not per­fect.  Only time will tell if it is a great plan.

But it is a plan which should be insti­tut­ed imme­di­ate­ly, while the funds are avail­able.
Let’s take a leap of faith.  Let’s take a leap into the future and get this done.