For over a year, Westporters have hotly contested the future of Parker Harding Plaza.
A plan to add more greenery to the riverside parking lot behind Main Street — while making it ADA-compliant and safer for emergency vehicles, causing the loss of 40-plus spaces — has enraged some merchants and shoppers.
Reaction to the plan — which also called for a reconfiguration of the Taylor lot across the Post Road near Jesup Green, and the possible addition of more parking at the Imperial Avenue lot — has led to renewed interest in a parking deck over the existing Baldwin lot, on Elm Street.
Those ideas are considered a radical rethinking of downtown.
But to Jeff Speck, they’re just baby steps.
Jeff Speck
The nationally renowned urban planner — whose books include “Walkable City: How Downtown Saves America, One Step at a Time” — has some ideas on how Westport can really transform itself.
Our town can be much more walkable and bikeable, he says.
And it all starts by looking at downtown in an entirely new way.
Speck spoke earlier this month at Bedford Middle School, sponsored by Sustainable Westport. He was competing with several other events — including Doris Kearns Goodwin at the Library, and Startup Westport at Longshore — but a crowd of nearly 200 listened intently.
Drawn in part by the idea of walkability and bikeability, they seemed intrigued by concepts like a 2-line bike lane from downtown to the beach, via Imperial Avenue, Bridge Street and Compo Road South.
Speck noted that parking, vehicle size, speed limits, the environment, the number of lanes and the width of roads impact walkability and safety.
But that was just an appetizer. The entrée was Speck’s red-meat version of a very different Main Street and environs.
His vision of Parker Harding is “a waterfront worthy of Westport.” It places a “second Main Street,” with parallel parking, between the shops and the water.
The rest of the space is reserved for playgrounds, plazas and other amenities.
Jeff Speck sketched out this plan for Parker Harding. The Saugatuck River is at bottom; the redesigned parking lot would include playgrounds, trees and other amenities.
It is based on a larger plan of centralizing downtown parking in a structure — multi-story, but hidden from view by apartments — on the Baldwin lot.
“Changing all your lightbulbs to energy savers saves as much energy in a year as moving to a walkable neighborhood saves in a week,” he says, citing “location efficiency” as a major factor in reducing a town’s carbon footprint.
On-street parking would be priced “properly,” which Speck says would allow merchants to “truly thrive.”
In his “Walkable City” book, Speck argues that a downtown becomes a “much more vital place” once merchants “are willing to learn (from best practices nationally) that parking right in front of one’s destination is a second-class solution.”
It is inferior, Speck argues, “to what happens in the best shopping districts, where people walk a short distance from centralized parking to their destinations, creating street life.”
Jeff Speck’s presentation included this aerial view of downtown Westport. The Baldwin parking lot and environs are outlined in red.
Pricing parking “properly” will also reduce the tremendous amount of “hunting-for-parking circulation,” which Speck says slows and frustrates downtown traffic.
He also advocates 2-way traffic on all of Main Street. (It was in effect from the advent of automobiles, through he 1970s.)
Two-way traffic “improves safety, street life, traffic circulation, access to shops, and revenues to merchants,” Speck says. (Click here for a story on 2-way traffic.)
Two-way Main Street traffic, in the 1970s. (Photo/Steve Baldwin)
Speck has one other suggestion: Remove the Athleta building, to create more of a path from Main Street to Parker Harding, and the river.
“A significant gap in that 925-foot long block is needed for its economic and social success,” Speck says. “It’s best located at the bottom of Elm Street.”
But how willing is a property owner to tear down a structure?
“If the owner of the Athleta building owns the adjacent properties, or a significant amount downtown, they will benefit financially from a plan that removes some or all of that building (or another one nearby), and then places doors and windows on the corridor created by its removal,” Speck says.
“The whole downtown will be more successful when that gigantic block no longer forms an interminable Great Wall of China between Main Street and the waterfront.
CGR — the owner, part of Empire State Realty — does own adjacent Main Street property.
Westporters have “grown accustomed to a tawdry waterfront that makes folks from out of town scratch their heads and wonder ‘but … how?'” he notes.
“It is so out of keeping with the upscale, attractive image that the town wishes to portray, and not worthy of your collective status and history.
“The plan to repave it is also unsustainable, barely reducing the amount of impervious area.”
Jeff Speck’s vision for Westport is big, bold — and bound to be controversial.
Exactly like Parker Harding Plaza was, when it was first announced 7 decades ago.
(Hat tip: Rob Feakins)
Click below to watch Jeff Speck’s full presentation.
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The morning after the presentation, a group of local officials including 1st Selectwoman Jen Tooker and members of the Downtown Plan Implementation Committee met with Speck and Sustainable Westport to discuss some of his ideas.
Speck reiterated the importance of a comprehensive master plan that addresses parking policy and strategy, alongside riverfront redesign and other development efforts.
Following Speck’s visit, Sustainable Westport urges residents to continue the conversation by contributing to the vision of a walkable Westport. The organization says.
They urge residents to share their opinions by email with the RTM (RTM-DL@Westportct.gov), Planning and Zoning Commission (PandZ@Westportct.gov), and Tooker (JTooker@Westportct.gov); selectwoman@westportct.gov).
To address traffic and safety issues, click here or email the head of the Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Task Force, Tom Kiely (Tkiely@westportct.gov).
To share ideas about downtown redevelopment, click here for the DPIC feedback form.
(“06880” covers the Westport waterfront — and riverfront, and downtown, and everything else in town. We also provide a forum for discussion about it all. Please click here to support our work!)
