NORTHAMPTON — Dubbed by current and former city officials a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity, an ambitious plan to redesign Main Street that began more than three years ago continues to be met with skep·ti·cism by several business owners and residents who worry that the project will hurt downtown more than help it.

The “Picture Main Street” project, done in coordination with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, calls for, among other things, removing more than a third of on-street parking, adding bike lanes in both directions, narrowing the roads to one lane each way, expanding sidewalks and planting new trees throughout the downtown area. Construction is set to begin in 2025 and is estimated to take three years to complete.

“It’s not my favorite idea,” said Terri Pajak, the manager for Synergy, a footwear and clothing store at 197 Main St. “This town needs some work, but it goes beyond just making it look pretty.”

Among the concerns raised by Pajak and many other business owners and residents about the $21 million project are potential traffic caused by narrowing the lanes, potential sales lost due to fewer on-street parking spaces, and the usefulness of bike paths when the city already has a rail trail bike path that extends near downtown.

For their part, city officials say the redesign will help address pedestrian safety, help revitalize downtown’s economy and help meet climate change goals.

“There’s been a whole economic shift that’s been happening for the last 20 years as retail has gone online, and has made it really harder for downtowns to succeed,” said Carolyn Misch, the director of planning and sustainability for Northampton. “We want to make [downtown] a place that’s flexible and diverse, and that could roll with these changes that have already been happening, that will continue to happen in the future, and create this outdoor living room space for the community.”

Project details

Picture Main Street would stretch across nearly a half-mile length of Main Street, beginning west of the intersection of Elm and West streets next to Smith College to the intersection of Market and Hawley streets near the rail trail bridge that spans Main.

The project would turn Main Street into three, 11-foot-wide vehicle travel lanes, with one of those lanes designated for turning. A 5½-foot bike lane would be built on each side of the road, separated from the road by a 3-foot buffer. Sidewalks would be expanded to be anywhere from 5½ feet to 35 feet wide on both sides.

Angled parking would be eliminated on one side of the road and replaced with only parallel parking, while the other side would have a mix of angled and parallel parking.

Business owners downtown question whether added bike paths are necessary, given that the rail trail already runs near Main Street. They also contend that narrowing the road could lead to further congestion downtown.

“What is the city’s justification for wanting bike paths on Main Street? We don’t know,” said Judy Herrell, who runs the Herrell’s Ice Cream & Bakery at 8 Old South St., just off Main. “There hasn’t been a real public meeting.”

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said the goal for the bike lanes is to encourage more people to use bicycles to access Main Street.

“We are trying to get people to bike downtown. We’re not trying to get people to bike around downtown,” Sciarra said in an interview. “I live very near downtown, and I would never let my children bike downtown without a dedicated bike lane.”

Skeptics of the plan cite an experiment done in August of 2020, when the city under former Mayor David Narkewicz implemented temporary changes to upper Main Street that narrowed the road to one traffic lane in each direction to make way for protected bike lanes and expanded open space to bring more people downtown.

That experiment folded after less than one month, with outspoken opposition from many of the downtown businesses.

Both Sciarra and Misch maintain that the 2020 experiment was beginning to work as intended but that amid the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many businesses already facing unprecedented challenges, it was not worth it to continue in such an oppositional climate.

“There was a lot of fear and panic about what the future would hold,” Misch said. “Why insert another cause for fear and concern, when these businesses are already stressed? I wouldn’t classify that as a failure.”

James Winston, an attorney whose office is located on Main Street and who has expressed reservations about the redesign plans, said he would like to see another trial run before construction actually begins, citing a street redesign plan in Austin, Texas, which is undergoing a similar yearlong trial run before redesigning one of its major roads.

“A trial run makes a lot of sense, and it’s a good compromise,” Winston said. “That would allow the city residents and visitors to Northampton to evaluate how it would be.”

But Sciarra said the nature of Northampton’s redesign made any argument for such a trial run untenable.

“This is such a massive redesign from end to end, there is no way to accurately do a trial,” she said. “It involves so much geometry change, and then involves changing of the timing of [traffic] lights.”

Sciarra also said safety concerns were a primary concern for the city and MassDOT in undertaking the project.

“It’s a really important opportunity to rethink how we use our space,” she said. “We want it to be a lot safer for pedestrians, of course, and for bicyclists.”

According to MassDOT data analyzed by the Gazette, since 2016 there have been 369 motor vehicle crashes on Main Street, about 9% of the total number of crashes that occurred in the city during that time. Of those 369 crashes, 23 involved a collision with a pedestrian and 11 involved cyclists, causing 31 non-fatal injuries, about a third of all traffic-related injuries on Main Street during that time.

Herrell said there are other ways to improve traffic safety downtown, such as introducing raised crosswalks to slow down cars, increased signage and better lighting to avoid late-night collisions.

Misch, however, said that there were other factors that contributed to Main Street safety risks, such as wide streets and cars backing out of angled parking spaces, that necessitated the redesign.

“Just putting up a raised crosswalk does not eliminate the width of the street in between those crosswalks, and it doesn’t eliminate the dangerous movements that angled parking creates,” Misch said. “It doesn’t eliminate the speeds — people are zipping around because they see this wide space and they think, I can take that.”

Herrell and Winston were critical of the responses they have received from the city and MassDOT when they try to share their concerns. 

“I can agree to disagree, I can discuss something even if it’s heated and say, OK we have different points of view here,” Herrell said. “I want [the city] to give me that same respect and listen to my point of view and then let’s see if we can compromise.”

To date, there have been around 30 stakeholder and public outreach meetings held by MassDOT regarding the Main Street redesign issue. Although many of the meetings have been held remotely over Zoom, Sciarra recalled that a community kick-off meeting to discuss the redesign, held in January before the start of the pandemic, was “one of the biggest public meetings” she’d ever attended.

Amy Mager, who runs the Wellness House, an acupuncture and Chinese medicine business on Brewster Court, right off Main Street, said she worries about the loss of parking. Under the Picture Main Street redesign, 57 parking spaces will be removed downtown, with many others converted from angled to parallel parking.

“My patients report problems with parking as it is,” said Mager. “If we lose parking, it’s going to be a significant challenge. It will be difficult for me to get here and for patients to come in.”

At Synergy, Pajak said parking spaces downtown were critical for many business owners. “A 15-minute parking spot can turn into a huge sale,” she said.

Sciarra said the number of parking spaces that will be eliminated closely matches the number of spaces already taken up by outdoor dining areas in the city during the summer months. She expressed confidence that businesses won’t be affected by the reduction.

“This is something that we can handle, and the benefits of creating more space for people bringing people downtown outweigh, I think, those concerns,” she said.

Though some businesses and residents remain skeptical, the project has also drawn support across the city, including from other downtown businesses. A group called Main Street for Everyone, which supports the redesign, in 2021 listed more than 50 businesses located on or near Main Street, such as Dirty Truth, Pita Pockets and State Street Fruit Store, that back the Picture Main Street project.

“A bold, green people-centered redesign of Main Street is good for business,” the website says. “We regard Main Street as our great public and economic center and view its redesign as a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

Other business owners see the redesign as inevitable, and feel they have to make the best of the situation.

“I’ve come to accept it,” said Anne Bowen, the owner of Strada, a store that sells European footwear on Main Street. “Climate change is real, and I would like the city to be more bicycle-friendly. But I’m concerned about whether we’re just rearranging the blacktop, and cutting down existing trees.”

Bowen says she also worries about whether her store could sustain another major disruption, after managing to stay afloat during the pandemic.

“My biggest fear is, can I weather another storm?” Bowen said.

City residents are also mobilizing in opposition to the redesign of Main Street. Kim Bierwert, a swim coach at Smith College who lives in Leeds, said he has talked more than 100 people about the issue, and of those “about 90% of them” said they were in opposition or had reservations about the project.

“Downtown is a focal point for people to go to, and a lot of it is people who drive through Northampton,” Bierwert said. “Not wanting people to drive downtown is a stretch. This is not London, New York or even Boston.”

Some homeowners who live near the city’s downtown are also expressing concern.

“This is a huge waste of money, because I don’t think it is going to add to downtown,” said Robyn Nelson, who lives with her husband and children on Crescent Street. “When I bike downtown, I go on the trail and then I get right downtown. But I’m not gonna bike downtown because they built a multimillion-dollar lane.”

Other residents express more optimisitc views of the redesign. In a guest column for the Gazette, George Kohout encourages the city not to miss this opportunity to remake downtown, writing that “downtown Northampton is a destination experience. The Main Street redesign components of expanded sidewalks, shade trees, defined traffic lanes and promotion of auxiliary parking lots will only enhance this reputation, allowing for additional outdoor dining and enabling more pedestrian traffic for people of all abilities.”  

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.

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