After more than a year of public meetings, contentious discussion and business and community pushback against proposals to reconfigure the downtown, the Select Board voted 4-1 to move forward with the Envision Needham Center Project’s four-lane design concept at its May 26 meeting.
“I wish we were doing more, personally,” said Select Board member Kevin Keane, while member Josh Levy, who voted against the motion, wanted to do less. “I would prefer a more minimal plan,” he said. “I agree with the four-lane concept. I’m not in favor of ripping up the road and doing some surface work at the same time.”
The vote came down to a choice between making no change to the town center or making the changes outlined in the four-lane conceptual plan, which would involve road and sidewalk construction.
The Envision project is part of the town’s long-term plan to address infrastructure and drainage issues along with improving roadway and sidewalk conditions for safety and accessibility. The Needham Center Working Group proposed three alternatives for Great Plain Avenue between Linden and Warren streets: keeping the current four lanes; creating two lanes; or two lanes with a turn option.
The majority of the 15-member working group preferred the four-lane plan and their completed report was presented at the May 12 Select Board meeting. At that meeting the board spent close to an hour discussing whether a four-lane plan, which would be similar to the existing conditions, was worth doing. To help with their decision, member Cathy Dowd asked Town Manager Katie King to provide the board with a memo comparing the four-lane alternative with making no changes.
King’s memo outlined the elements of the four-lane project related to the roadway and sidewalks, safety, utility upgrades and stormwater, streetscape improvements, parking and coordination with the Quiet Zone rail crossings scope. It included an overall cost estimate of $13.5 million for the four-lane alternative and noted a project is eligible for state Chapter 90 funding for stormwater mitigation only if it is part of a roadway project. The memo outlined the potential impact of moving forward or not, and whether any elements could be done separately.
“One of the things that was helpful for me in this memo was it helped me to see the efficiency to doing it all together,” said Dowd. “The only way to get Chapter 90 money to pay for drainage is if it’s included in a road project.”
Member Bill Dermody concurred. “It seems like if you’re doing this then we should do the stormwater repair at the same time. Initially I was thinking, ‘Can we take it piecemeal out and do some?,’ but I think it best to do everything together with this four-lane plan adoption,” he said.
That’s where Levy disagreed with his fellow board members. “I like having the configuration of four lanes. I don’t necessarily see the need to move forward with all of those alterations at this time,” he said.
Keane, who was a member of the working group, supported the project for safety considerations. “You don’t get safety unless you design for it and we have to have safety,” he said. “I’m fine, I think it makes sense to tell DPW, ’Go ahead with the four-lane thing.’” He added the need to engineer it along with plans for the Quiet Zone changes at the town railroad crossings.
Select Board Chair Heidi Frail echoed the concern for safety. “I would want to make sure that the pedestrian safety elements are included,” she said.” It’s hard for me to justify without these benefits.”
Frail noted that they are working with a conceptual design but do not yet have a designed engineering plan and asked Department of Public Works Director Carys Lustig about the process to move forward.
“The next step would be to have funding for design. We had discussed in our Envision committee meeting and at the last (board) meeting about going through the Town Meeting process in order to initiate that,” said Lustig. “So the next opportunity would be either October or May to start the design process.”
Lustig said she anticipates it will be an 18-month process for the design. “And then we’d be looking at construction funds, and securing Chapter 90, whatever funds the project would qualify for.”
“Once that happens we would figure out variables we have at this particular point,” she said. “We have a concept plan. We’re really at the very beginning stages.”
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