Downtown planning effort off to a good start with park

Taken by itself, the vacant lot at the corner of Wisconsin Ave. and State St. in Medford isn’t much to look at.

The parcel measures about .2-acres in size. Before it was leveled to allow for the reconstruction on the State St. bridge it had served as the location of a laundromat, prior to that it was a diner. Over the years the lot has served many functions, but for now it is just gravel, dirt and mud, scarred and littered with the remains of serving as the staging area for the bridge construction project.

Given its proximity to the river and small size, the lot is not conducive for redevelopment for commercial purposes, leaving it likely that it will stay in city hands for years to come.

The traditional way of handling a parcel such as this would be to either pave it over to provide more downtown parking, spread some topsoil on it and plant grass with maybe two or three memorial trees or simply leave it as a gravel lot and use it as a place to store snow plowed from downtown streets in the winter. These options are quick and relatively cheap, both in upfront and ongoing maintenance cost.

Instead of being satisfied with the simple solution, Mayor Mike Wellner and city coordinator Joe Harris see redevelopment of the lot, not as a chore, but as an opportunity to enhance Medford and in particular the downtown community.

There were those who were quick to criticize a proposal to hire a firm to help the city integrate the lot into the park network. While, on the surface, spending $25,000 just to come up with ideas for an approximately 8,800 square foot lot seems excessive, the scope of the project goes beyond simply the lot and ties in other nearby city-owned spaces along with the adjacent Riverwalk. There are legitimate needs in the downtown public spaces such as access to electrical power, restroom facilities and shelters that need to be integrated into any development plans.

While a consultant will be able to provide guidance and expertise in designing these amenities, the city council made the right call last week in stepping back from hiring someone. Instead of allowing allegations of wastefulness and bickering to undermine the redevelopment efforts they gave a chance for the stakeholder committee, that includes residents, business owners and government officials, to meet and define a scope of the project. That group met for the first time on Monday evening.

Going forward there will be plenty of time for discussion and debate, balancing what would be nice, with what is affordable and practical for the community’s needs today and in the future. For now, it is refreshing for the city to be looking beyond simply what is least inconvenient for the public works department and instead examining the bigger picture of how this space could be a benefit for the entire community.