Jenna Petok moved to Westport in January 2022. Nine months later, she was appointed to the Downtown Plan Implementation Committee.
Her professional background is in marketing and placemaking for real estate and business improvement districts. Her full-time job is global head of CX at Host — CBRE’s experiential and digital tenant engagement platform. Jenna writes:
As a place-maker in real estate and community development, I aim to help Westporters understand the significance of the vision, and urgency to enhance the safety and resilience of our downtown and its rare and wonderful riverfront attribute.
Through enhancing placemaking (the participatory process of connecting culture and events with physical surroundings and real estate), wayfinding (readable directional signage for where to park, shop, dine and visit), and the activation of more open spaces, together we can create a sustainable and multi-modal downtown that we all need for the future.
Downtown is many things, to many people. (Photo/JC Martin)
Great downtowns create opportunities for primary destinations like shopping and dining, and secondary reasons to stay, linger, explore, stumble upon events and experiences, and shop and dine some more.
Currently, downtown is primarily accessible to people with cars, and leaves out to some extent pedestrians entering town by foot (lack of safe crosswalks), bikers (lack of bike lanes and bike parking), people who need accessible parking, and families with young children trying to keep them safe in parking lots and crossing unsafe crosswalks.
Cars are king downtown.
Since becoming a Westport resident, I participated in the DPIC charrettes and surveys, and heard mainly positive feedback on the plans. Beginning last June, I was shocked to find this visionary strategy and plan for our downtown suddenly reduced to the number of parking spaces available in a dangerous lot that is currently a deterrent.
Of course the lack of parking is a concern, and we need places for people to park. But if they are coming (as some merchants mentioned) to pick up their order, that is because they are coming for a single purpose and leaving. If we can work together to look holistically at the infrastructure and planning needed to give people multiple ways to get downtown and access safe parking, we will create a more economically viable downtown and surrounding area.
Cold Fusion
One reason to hang out downtown. (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
I’ve also heard the argument that people don’t want to hang out in town and that green space is not needed. Perhaps this is because there is currently almost nowhere desirable to do so.
Take the other side of the river, for example, where there is a patch of green space with seating. I have spent countless times with friends and family there, where my kids can run around safely, thankful to have a place to enjoy the riverfront before or after shopping and dining.
West side of the Saugatuck River. (Photo/Jonathan Alloy)
Community development is about collaboration and compromise. After 40 years of debate, we need to move forward urgently to begin the first part of this multiphase plan.
This will continue to be a step-by-step process with community feedback, the first of which is creating the additional parking spaces in the upper Jesup Green lot.
The newly planned lot will not only benefit merchants, but also our amazing programming at the Westport Library and Levitt Pavilion.
Let’s get started, and balance our parking needs with activating the riverfront to give future generations of Westporters and visitors the gift of a sustainable and vibrant town.
The Saugatuck River runs through downtown. (Photo/Andrew Fishman)
(“06880” covers all sides of the continuing downtown debate. If you enjoy our hyper-local journalism, please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
I’ll politely disagree regarding the sacrifice of Jesup Green and six of its mature trees in favor of more parking simply to benefit merchants. I’m of the opinion that creating incentives for their employees, and their managers & owners, to park at Imperial would free up the necessary capacity for their customers at P.H.P.
Brava Jenna! Parker Harding is a disgrace to our beautiful town- it is impossible to navigate by foot or car and relegates our incredible waterfront to a trash repository. We can and must do better! Our merchants only stand to benefit from a robust and beautiful downtown that is at the center of Westport life. (Many thanks are due to our merchants for providing goods and services that pave this path to begin with).
Thank you for bringing your professional expertise to making this town amazing for generations to come! Always amazed by the wonderful brilliant people in this town. We are truly all so lucky to live here.
Finally! And while you’re at it how about a children’s playground downtown too…
Agreed! The only place I hear negative commentary on the plans to revitalize downtown are here, where people seem to believe that this is the same downtown from 25+ years ago where you might pop in to run a quick errand. No one does that, because there really are no places to run errands downtown anymore. Downtown is almost exclusively a destination for shopping, dining, and other socializing. You can lament that reality, but it won’t change it. And like other such destinations, people can and do park and walk to the main attraction.
As for Parker Harding Plaza – it’s an abomination to waste riverfront on a (frankly horrible) parking lot and dumpster storage zone that, as a benefit (?), also serves as a speedway for people cutting through to the train station. Yet commenters here are willing to lay down in front of bulldozers to protect it.
P.S., I’ve never had trouble finding a decent parking space downtown except at Christmas (when I can still find a spot, it’s just further away). You just might have to (gasp) park and walk 100-200 feet. It is so funny to hear residents of this ostensibly progressive town become enraged at the idea of… walking.
Great article. Well said Jenna!
If Jesup green is sacrificed for cars, you can bank on these outcomes:
1. More people will be encouraged to drive into town seeking those additional spaces and that almost immediately, the supply of spaces will be outnumbered by the number of vehicles seeking a place to park. No matter what you do, the number of spaces available is finite but the number of vehicles is unlimited.
2. Beautiful, historic Jesup green will be gone and it won’t be coming back.
Back in the day, downtown Westport was a thriving area of commerce and resources and it flourished despite having two-way traffic on main Main Street (gasp! horror!) and yes, sometimes one couldn’t immediately find a parking space in PHP (gasp! horror!). And somehow, merchants and their employees managed to park and get to work.
By all means, add safe crosswalks and bike lanes/parking if needed. But you’re dreaming if you think destroying one of the Crown Jewels of downtown Westport is going to solve your problem. You’re pursuing a mirage.
Just to be completely clear, the plan that I have seen doesn’t “sacrifice” Jesup Green. It calls for reducing parking in the main area of the green, and adding parking on the far side of the green – an area that is hardly utilized, as it currently backs up to the police station parking lot. The core of the green not only remains, it is enhanced.
Not too long ago there was a street running through the middle of the sanctified Jesup Green. Which used to back up to the town dump. Oh, and before that, it was part of a private estate, not a town commons. In Westport, history seems primarily to mean “how things were when I moved here.” Or “how things were when I moved away after high school.” Or “how I would like things to be.”
There’s a lot between the green and the river and there’s a lot between the green and the police station. That’s it. The area of the green that is “hardly utilized” is still the green. And yes, it is more or less intact as it was when I lived there. Maybe that’s because Westport treasures it and should seek to continue to protect it.
And where will all the cars park after all the new spaces are occupied? Ever thought about that?
The overall DPIC plan is to enhance downtown, making it attractive and safer for walking, biking, shopping, dining and parking for everyone.
The phasing of the overall plan to improve downtown and enjoy the riverfront safely is necessary to efficiently carryout the construction of the overall plan. Providing a row of parking at the top of Jesup Green is one phase and part of the overall plan is to enlarge the Green on the riverfront side so it can be a more attractive green space instead of being a space surrounded on 3 sides by parking and roads. Work on the Parker Harding phase can then proceed.
Yes, there will be a railing on the riverfront, to code and a playground is planned for Jesup Green.
“riverfront attribute … placemaking … wayfinding … directional signage … activation … multi-modal.”
This piece could be an excellent homework assignment in a high school class on writing persuasively. To build credibility and authority when speaking to a broad audience, start with concrete words, and cut out the industry jargon.
This is an unnecessary and malevolent comment. Writing it instead of looking up what both multi-modal (multiple modes…) and directional signage (signs that give directions…) mean, you chose to comment. It’s a choice, but it’s not productive to the dialogue. So while the author may take your advice, please take mine – spend your effort more wisely. And do better.
Thank you for sharing your two years of countless memories
A couple of things – first, while I don’t have specific numbers, I will bet that the number of people arriving on foot and by bike are tiny compared to those driving. This has always been a car-centric area and always will be. That being said, when people do arrive by car, they want to be able to walk around safely.
Additionally, while I personally never have an issue parking and walking a bit of a distance to go to a specific store, I am slightly concerned about disabled and elderly who can’t manage to do that.
Add to that the simple fact that if people can’t park relatively easily, they will shop or eat somewhere else – and there are plenty of places in other towns to do so.
As it relates to Parker Harding specifically; this is an area that floods fairly frequently. While it is riverfront, it works well as a parking lot since there are no permanent structures on it, and generally cars will not be there during a storm.
I think the priority of any plan for downtown needs to be increasing the number of parking spaces located in convenient areas for people to access stores and restaurants. After that, improving the flow of traffic so that it is safer for people to walk around.
Only two years in Town and already the conviction that the 2015 Downtown Master Plan (at a quarter million dollar cost to Westport’s taxpayers) should be superceded. All that work, dedication, contemplation, community involvement and decision-making tossed down the drain by someone just arrived? Astounding.
However a meaningful suggestion: Given Jenna’s expertise in creating an “experiential and digital tenant engagement platform” perhaps she can partner with residents to create a more effective and efficient means for active community engagement which enables resident driven prioritization and decision-making including digitized referendums. THAT would be a necessary advancement over the current oligarchy we have now become subjected to.
The technology exists. We only need someone with the will and expertise to achieve this.
Bravo Jenna!
As a lifelong resident of Fairfield County (Westport and Greenwich) and Connecticut College grad too, you have a very long view (as a stakeholder) on creating community and community places. Your voice shall light the way for Westport!
A gentle reminder, the by far and away biggest stakeholders in the down town are the merchants who pay ALLLLLL the property taxes in the downtown. If anybody has a say in the downtown it is the merchants.
That makes us by a country mile the biggest stakeholders.
Jenna’s view is so flawed and she has blinders on by virtue of her job as a henchman for tooker on DPIC. Wonder how many interviews she had before Moore hired her !
Dpic should be immediately fired.
They have cost this town a small fortune because of their ignorance. Jenna included.
Nobody living here a year or two,has any knowledge of this towns workings. It would simply not be possible.
The FS is one of many elected positions in Westport, a far more important position is P&Z and the BoF.
Jen tooker I have seen treating the BoF like pure garbage !!!!
Is it any wonder Brian stern resigned.
He was a long time BoF electee, chosen by the people year over year because of his excellence.
The FSW tantrums I’m sure caused us to lose one of our best BoF members, and watch the meetings if you don’t believe me.
Watching how she speaks to the BoF is out of control !!! The warnings, the undertones all spoken like a 5 year old throwing a tantrum.
It is disgraceful.
Jenna mentions dining, shopping, going to some activities, then dining and shopping some more…
In 3 hours ??????
How ?
Unless you are in a time capsule.
That alone nullified her entire speel.
We need parking !
We do not need to tear up jesup green.
Get a grip.
There is no room for green space in Parker Harding.
That’s because the town is already so successful.
Still waiting for direction on staff parking.
So leave PH alone, leave Jesup green alone.
Enough tantrums.
It’s getting very old.
And incidentally Jimmy Izzo joined the ranks of a business hater. And an anti business touter. He just couldn’t help himself