The public will have a chance to ask questions and share their opinions about the Envision Needham Center project at a public information session Wednesday, Feb. 4, at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.
The three concepts for the possible redesign of the downtown along Great Plain Avenue between Linden and Warren Streets will be presented, including video animations showing the concept layouts and changes to traffic flow. An online survey will go live following the meeting and remain open through Feb. 22.
Members of the Envision CenterWorking Group, town staff and consultants from Apex will present the design alternatives: keeping the current four lanes (blue plan), creating two lanes (yellow plan) or a hybrid two lanes with turn lanes (white plan).
The presentation will outline seven main considerations that were evaluated and compared in each of the plans: Safety, economic development, cost, mobility and access for non-motorists, streetscape and urban design opportunities, traffic flow and sustainability and resilience.
The Select Board got a preview of the presentation at its Jan. 27 meeting and was drawn to the consultant’s traffic flow study of cars through the center and possible effects on the adjacent neighborhood. Because of the amount of detail involved, Chair Heidi Frail several times encouraged attendance at the public meeting to ask questions. She noted that a postcard was mailed to all Needham households with information about the meeting and the online survey. She thanked the Working Group for what she acknowledged was a hard job.
“It’s improbable that we will get a clear direction because everyone here uses this area of town and has opinions about it,” said Frail. “There isn’t one group of people, there’s many, many groups of people and so being sensitive to how all those needs intersect is really the charge here.”
One group of residents advocating for the four-lane plan has created its own postcard and is hand-delivering and emailing it to some homes in town. Caren Carpenter, co-owner with her husband, Stu, of Copley Motorcars, had been active in the Not Our Vision campaign last spring opposing the Envision pilot out of concern it would hurt businesses. She felt the next step was to get residents involved and is working with resident Janet Bulian on the postcard to promote the four-lane plan.
“We wanted it to be fair and accurate. We put both the town website for Envision and our Not Our Vision website on the postcard,” said Carpenter. The cards are also being distributed at downtown businesses and Carpenter said they hope to reach at least half the households in town with their message.
“We also want as many people as we can to take the survey, which is really, really important,” she said. “If it comes back that people decide they want a two-lane plan instead of a four-lane plan, then we all accept what’s going to happen.”
Frail expressed a hope that community members will keep an open mind about the Envision project. “I want to remind everybody to enter this fray with the framework of curiosity and asking questions of what things are and how we can all work together for this centerpiece of our community,” she said.
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