>>Valley Patriot>>
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Finally, Essex Street Will Have
Two Way Traffic
(05/07/07)
For far too long, the residents of Lawrence have been
complaining about the flow of traffic on Essex Street.
Pedestrians complain about the fact that Essex Street  has become a
speedway because of three lanes of traffic from one end
of the street to the other. Businesses have complained,
and rightfully so, that their customers have no place to
park and with the congestion on Essex Street during the
day, potential customers cannot even get to their
establishments.
During the last two elections I heard the message of the
voters loud and clear about the problems on Essex Street.
The message was: change Essex Street from one way to two
way traffic. This is an issue that Lawrence residents
have been talking about for more than 20 years, but until
recently nobody had been willing to take on what seemed
like an insurmountable task.
With the help of City Councilor Grisel Silva, who first
brought the issue to my attention last year in a column
she wrote in The Valley Patriot, we began to formulate a
plan to pull together community development, the planning
department, the Police Department and several members of
the business community to see what could be done to
finally rectify the traffic problems downtown.
Community Development Director Tommy Schiavone
spearheaded the effort on behalf of my office and a plan
was put together to do the unimaginable, restore Essex
Street to the hustle and bustle we experienced 30 years
ago.
While I fully understand that this will not happen
overnight, the improvement plan we have put forth will be
the first step towards bringing more customers and more
businesses to the downtown area. This means an increase
in tax revenue for the city as well as an increase in the
economy for those who live and work here every day.
Within thirty days of the council’s vote to approve
this project (which took place May1st), we will begin to
install new signage, new crosswalks, a beautification
plan for tree pruning and trimming, new banners
highlighting the wonderful downtown city of Lawrence and,
most importantly, a change of traffic flow from one way
traffic on Essex Street to two way traffic from Union
Street to Broadway.
Currently, Essex Street has three lanes of traffic, all
traveling west from Union to Broadway. Under the plan
approved by the council, there will be only two lanes
traveling west and one lane traveling east from Broadway
to Union. My Essex Street plan will add more than 40
parking spaces to the downtown area. This is good news
for everyone, business owners and their customers alike.
One of the alternatives we are looking at to provide even
more parking downtown is to take the city-owned parking
lots and open them up for parking as well. Though it is
not etched in stone just yet, my plan is to offer these
parking lots for free to business owners and their
employees so that there is more parking available for
their customers during the day.
Of course, we want to be flexible and we will be making
more decisions about that on a month-to-month basis. We
have some very capable and brilliant people working on
maximizing our potential for parking, while keeping the
traffic flowing evenly and smoothly.
By now you must be asking yourself: what is the cost of
this major downtown project? How can we afford to do this
at a time when the city is so financially strapped?
The fact is that we are most likely going to make a
minimum investment of $700,000 with the main source of
funds coming from community development block grants and
capital improvement money. Much to my surprise, the
funding problems we have had in the DPW will not affect
this project one bit.
What’s been really surprising to me about all this
is how supportive the business community and the City
Council have been since the inception of this plan. All
the business owners and employees we have talked to over
the last several months have been extremely supportive of
this plan. I think they really support this project
because they realize the impact this is going to have on
improving traffic problems, parking problems and
increasing the number of customers patronizing their
stores.
That’s good for everybody. I haven’t had one
business owner speak in opposition to this plan. Not one
city councilor. Not one member of the public has showed
any resistance to making Essex Street two way. Even the
City Council approved the downtown plan last month by a
unanimous vote. I can’t remember the last time I
sent down any kind of plan which received such widespread
support from the voters, the business community and the
City Council. No matter what you try to do in the city of
Lawrence, there always seems to be someone looking for an
excuse to throw a monkey wrench into the works, but not
this time.
Maybe that’s because we have such capable and
innovative people helping us to bring this project to
fruition. We have hired T.E.C., a Lawrence company which
has been on board early on and brought to the table its
expertise and experience with these kinds of projects.
So now, here we are. Within thirty days (from May 1st),
the ordinance passed by the City Council will take
effect. The new trash receptacles, benches, tree
trimming, pruning, and the erection of new signs will
actually begin in June. Then we will order the new
traffic lights for the eastbound traffic, which is the
bulk of the expense of making Essex Street two way. From
start to finish, the project should take no longer than a
total of five months.
That means by the end of the year this downtown
renovation project will be completed and the citizens of
Lawrence will be able to take advantage of a newly
renovated, fully functional downtown area that is
inviting to visitors of Lawrence. It welcomes Lawrence
residents to spend more time downtown.
As for the interruption of traffic while the project is
underway, we are going to try and install traffic lights
on weekends to minimize the inconvenience for people who
live and work downtown. There will be a portion of the
project where the number of lanes will be brought to two
so that we can restore one side of the street while
allowing businesses to continue on the other side without
having to shut down Essex Street completely.
I really have to take my hat off to the many people who
banded together and stood behind this idea and helped the
people of Lawrence to achieve progress in the downtown. I
want to thank the City Council, particularly District
Councilor Grisel Silva, Community Development Director
Tommy Schiavone, Planning Director Michael Sweeney, the
professionals at TEC, Police Chief John Romero, the
downtown merchants, and most importantly the voters of
Lawrence who had the faith in me and my administration to
give us two terms in the mayor’s office to get major
improvements like this accomplished.
I also want to thank The Valley Patriot for continually
keeping the Essex Street issue alive over the last few
years and encouraging all of the people of Lawrence to
come together and discuss ways of making this happen,
instead of listening to the tired rhetoric we hear from
others about how things in Lawrence just cannot move
forward.
Michael Sullivan is the mayor of Lawrence
and is in his second four-year term. You can email him at
Sull33@aol.com
or call his office at 978-794-5858 and ask for Nora.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The MAY 2007 Edition of
the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2007, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 12,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
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