“Walkable cities” are environmentally, socially and economically vibrant.
Can Westport become a “walkable town”?
Sustainable Westport thinks so.
On June 4, the non-profit group brings urban planner Jeff Speck to Bedford Middle School (6 p.m. reception, 6:30 presentation).
Jeff Speck
Speck — whose books include “Walkable City: How Downtown Saves America, One Step at a Time” — speaks nationally on how towns and cities can embrace walking and biking.
In February, he addressed a capacity crowd at the New Canaan Library.
But Westport is a bit different from our suburban neighbor, Speck acknowledges. For one thing, a river runs through us.
For another, our train station — the town’s transportation hub — is located away from downtown.
Speck has been to Westport. He likes it.
“You’ve got good bones,” he says. “A lot of places don’t have a traditional downtown, with small streets and buildings that make it walkable.”
Westport “is starting on third base.”
What will get our home town to home plate?
As with any walkable, bikable community, 4 things are part of the framework. It must be “useful, safe, comfortable and interesting.”
“Communities like Westport don’t like to change,” Speck notes.
“It’s not complacency. It’s a fear of losing what they have. I understand that.”
But, he adds, change is often necessary for “resilience and longevity.”
One obvious place to look is the Post Road. Speck knows it’s a state route; the town does not control it. But, he says, there are ways to make it “calmer, and more welcoming.”
More controversial might be his thoughts about downtown. He advocates apartments — and a parking garage hidden behind them — at the Baldwin lot on Elm Street.
Jeff Speck thinks a parking garage — and apartments in front — would make downtown more lively and “resilient.”
More people, and easier parking, would make downtown more lively, Speck says.
“A lot of people would love to live in smaller units: young people, older ones. The more bodies you have downtown, the better it can weather the economic storms that visit our communities.”
He’s seen the “shock and outrage” that accompany suggestions like that, in dozens of communities. That fades, he says, when they see how well those ideas work.
Two places where, he says, these hidden parking lots work are Northampton, Massachusetts and Frederick, Maryland.
Speck has another idea — one that he was unaware is currently causing great debate here.
He was surprised, when he visited Westport, to see that “the waterfront is a parking lot.” He’d prefer “a linear park” along the Saugatuck River.
“If I wasn’t so busy, I’d draw it up myself,” he says.
Some of Jeff Speck’s ideas align with those proposed originally by the Downtown Plan Implementation Committee, for more green space by the Saugatuck River. The idea is controversial.
Another “major opportunity” is to add more housing near the train station.
The area is “under-utilized,” he says. “People can live right by the railroad. It’s a healthier lifestyle, for themselves and the planet.
“You learn in Planning 101 to bring housing to transit, and transit to housing.
One challenge to ideas like those, he reiterates, is that “communities generally don’t like to change.
“Most people in most communities would like more apartments. They just don’t want them near them.”
Most public meetings until the last decade “pitted NIMBYs against the business goals of developers,” Speck explains. “Planners had to choose which they wanted.
“Now you’ve got pro-housing, pro-sustainability, pro-biking people, who just want to see their community do the right thing. They’ve been effective.”
Speck had not heard of Bike Westport, a non-profit dedicated to making Westport more safe for biking and walking.
But, he says, “Bike groups have been my biggest supporters. I hope they show up.
“It will be a lively discussion, I promise.”
(Click here to register for Jeff Speck’s June 4 talk, and more information.)
(“06880” regularly covers the environment, real estate, local politics, transportation — and the intersection of them all. Please click here to support our hyper-local journalism. Thank you!)
Oh great. Yet another urbanist who, in the interests of “liveliness”, wants to cram more cars, people and buildings into my congested downtown neighborhood.
Perfectly stated!!!
Interesting use of “urbanist” as an insult.
The 105th guy in the last 70 years who has the answers! I’ve seen this movie before!
Sounds like he has some great ideas. I expect hysterical responses from the small group of angry people nostalgic for a Westport that never existed who, with seemingly too much time on their hands, shake their fists and light their torches at even incremental progress toward making Westport a safer, more sustainable, and livelier place to live and, being the loudest voices in the room but hardly the most reasonable and certainly not speaking for the majority, often with a hidden agenda, sadly dominate these discussions.
Remember that just a few short years ago, downtown Westport was a desolate ghost town and could very quickly go that way again. And the Saugatuck of today, with all the restaurants, shops, and markets we love and patronize didn’t exist. A better world is possible.
You are correct that Westport was a ghost town and that was because of utterly extortionate rents so stores and restaurants closed or moved and nobody wanted to take on the massive rental burden so nobody came.
Parking of course was also a massive deterrent until during covid the parking became all day.
Rents dropped and businesses opened in those empty spaces.
Rents did and have crept up again but Westport is now vibrant once more thanks in large part to the new restaurants which are popular, busy and vibrant.
I would like to note that the awakening of main street and downtown had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with our administration or any of their policies, though they love to try and take/fake credit for it.
What he said!
I love Westport, but I wonder how many runners and cyclists can read “Westport ‘is starting on third base’” and keep straight face.
Starting a third base would certainly make things livelier downtown. Let’s see what, um, Mr. Johnson thinks.
I agree there are some good, common sense ideas here. I’m afraid many folks would not or could not give up driving in town, sadly.
Westport could clean the bike lanes of debris which forces bikers into the roadway.
We go down this road every 5/7 years and no matter whom we hire, the conclusion is always the same. I guess all the newbies need to learn for themselves. As ex-P&Z commission chair and member for 13 years, I personally sat through this exercise no less than 6 times. yawn.
We go down this road because as bears are to bee hives, so consultants are to Westport… smell that money, honey.
What Mr. Speck is missing here is the history of in particular Parker Harding where the river used flow !
It no longer flows there because the merchants decades ago out of utter desperation paid 80% of the cost of reclaiming land and creating a “parking lot”.
They did this because there was not enough parking in the 1950’s, and we certainly know we had a fraction of the population and a fraction of the cars.
Nobody is suggesting that it would not be prettier to have Parker Harding more green, however we have to be practical here and remember who it was and for what reason, they paid the lions share of Parker Harding in the first place.
This is why the PZ commission responsibly told the administration they must replace somewhere else, any parking removed from Parker Harding or the Taylor lot, in order to create more green space.
In an ideal world back in the 1950’s the parking lots should have been created elsewhere in downtown, but they were not!
Westport is a very spread out town. We have lots of rainy days, we get snow. I presume Mr. Speck is not thinking that residents will walk from their homes ( unless they live in the downtown) to come and stroll the river or go out to shop or eat.
Equally his thoughts re: apartments would be a land owners dream. They could make lots more money if they could urbanize our downtown by putting up apartments. ( think the hamlet)
That would be a nightmare.
Each apartment “should” come with 2 car parking spaces created by the developer, In reality they NEVER EVER do.
We simply don’t have the space for what he is imagining.
I’m sure some contractor/ Westport downtown property owner already has their beady eyes on the police dept building should it ever move, and plans a gargantuan apartment complex, or mixed use development. I seem to recall at a recent meeting Mr. Mandell drooling over the possibilities.
Let’s not forget those possibilities in turn will further erode the parking for other residents and businesses. Parking we desperately need.
Let’s not forget that the Westport women’s club has a lease on imperial town lot. I doubt they are willing nor should they be to give that up.
Let’s also remember that imperial lot is a town lot and not a parking lot. It is in a residence zone and would need permission from the PZ by way of a text ammendment to turn it into a parking lot.
It is also the current location of the farmers market, every Thursday during peak daytime hours. This means, if it stays there, or gets a “permanent home” there as DPIC suggests, it will not work for parking on Thursdays. That means it cannot be included in a parking plan.
Westport has had 60 years to develop a better transit and transportation situation. It has barely improved in all those decades.
Same goes for parking, it’s been a problem since the 1950’s.
Now it’s 50x worse.
In order to implement the greener downtown, there are decades of inaction on parking and transit, to catch up on before any downtown green plan, or urbanization can be taken seriously.
What would be far smarter would be an extensive and very wide boardwalk built out over the river, so bikers and pedestrians alike can enjoy the river.
Let’s all meanwhile remember who it was built Parker Harding ( which was river) and why it was that land was created and at whose expense.
Kudos to the business owners who are making downtown more lively.
Alas, my nearly 30-years in Town has instilled a habit of avoiding downtown like the plague. Sometimes I think my friend Morley wishes there were more people like me!
Without in any way minimizing the parking issues, I do think that it is a terrible waste to have parking along the waterfront. In an ideal world, it would be much better using the natural resource as park space – something else that would bring people downtown, too. But I get it, how do you replace the parking? (Though that is why I’m not knee-jerk opposed to alternative parking solutions – just not at the cost of green space.)
I think that the unfortunate truth of it is that the locations of downtown buildings in Westport make for narrow streets and clogged intersections. The (absolutely necessary) traffic lights on either side of the Post Road Bridge create bottlenecks and discourage the enjoyment of downtown. The point about the train station is a good one that I never really consider. (The buildings between Post, Jesup, and Taylor would disappear, Starbucks, too, if I had a magic wand – and I mean no offense to any of their business owners. In terms of town layout, those are simply in the way.)
When you contrast our awful downtown with New Canaan’s great one, you can see the inherent advantages in the layout of that town – wide streets, an abundance of parking, a layout that rewards walking and wandering, and, yes, a train station that is easily walkable, too.
Nothing has really changed since I’ve been here. I don’t think moving the Y and replacing it with development has improved downtown. But I also think that unless the basic faults in the downtown layout were magically changed, nothing is going to improve it all that much.
Chris, you are correct in your assessment. We are not New Canaan.
Two of our former police chiefs called our streets cow paths, which they were. One former chief went on the record during the Downtown 2020 study ( I think) and said that building a deck on the Baldwin lot would make the traffic even worse because we have old cow paths for roads.
When this latest “study” is done let’s not forget that it originated with a well meaning outside group and was not commissioned by P&Z who are our elected planning representatives. There will be no new outcomes.
BTW, I love our downtown and our merchants. To our merchants, thank you and keep doing what your doing.
That’s funny because it’s true!
I think they designed New Canaan streets so you could take a U-turn in your stagecoach! Yee-haw!