The Somerville Esplanade

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

I love the bike path, particularly the bit from Davis Square to Cedar Street. I walk from Willow to Davis several times a week on that path, and I love its green, quiet stretch through the bustling city. I have often thought, wouldn't it be great to have a café or a restaurant on the path, someplace with tables out on a patio opening onto the path. It would be the only place in metro Boston where you could have streetside service without having to compete with noise and fumes from cars and buses. It would be, dare I say it, positively Parisian, and I bet people would flock to it.

Well, the Carli Fence property is for sale, a long, thin stretch of land on the north side of the bike path, extending from Willow towards Davis Square almost to the artists' lofts. It's currently an industrial mess, all paved, a long, brick warehouse with its back to the bike path, and lots of chain link fence (after all, it was Carli Fence!) From Google Maps, it looks like the property is T-shaped, with the top of the T along the bike path and the leg of the T ending at Morrison Avenue.

I would love to see this property redeveloped as a cafe or restaurant which opens out onto the bike path, creating a destination on the path. It could have parking on the Morrison Avenue side. The north side of the path is residential, so I suppose there will be noise concerns, but with smart design that could be handled.

What I really don't want to see there is more luxury condos with a parking lot up against the bike path; or the brick back of a minimall. I'd like to see a development that takes the bike path seriously as a way to get around the city, and that celebrates the quiet, green space in the midst of a noisy, crowded city.

Comments

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

"It was a good thing that Jaime Lerner had grown up loving the mix of people in Curitiba. Because through a chain of political flukes, Lerner found himself the mayor of Curitiba at the age of 33. All of a sudden, his friends and colleagues were pulling their plans out of the cupboards. All of a sudden, they were going to get their chance to remake Curitiba-not for cars, but for people."


And so the story of Curitiba begins (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1108-33.htm)

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

"Lerner insisted instead that it should become a pedestrian mall, an emblem of his drive for a human-scale city. "I knew we'd have a big fight," he says. "I had no way to convince the store-owners a pedestrian mall would be good for them, because there was no other pedestrian mall in Brazil. But I knew if they had a chance to actually see it, everyone would love it."