Category — Waban

As I hope everyone knows, Newton Highlands’ Village Day is tomorrow.  To the unwitting observer, this would seem unrelated to the recent beautification work I observed a couple of weeks ago.

In fact, the two are intimately connected, and made possible through the Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council (NHNAC).

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Last week, Newton Villages hosted Emmy Hahn of Massachusetts Downtown Initiative (MDI) for a tour of city’s village centers.  Hahn has extensive and broad experience in revitalizing downtowns:  she directed the downtown revitalization program in New Bedford, and has coordinated MDI–a statewide educational and technical assistance program to improve downtowns in Massachusetts–for several years.  She knows a lot about downtowns.

During her visit to Newton, while she toured several village centers (plus Needham Street) with a crew of Newton Villagers and others, one concept dominated all others: Business Improvement Districts (BIDs).

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[UPDATE 4/2/2010: Online registration is open.]

Nearly a dozen of the projects planned for the city’s community service day will improve public spaces in our village centers. NewtonSERVES is coming up on April 25th — mark your calendars.

Some of the volunteer projects in village centers include:

Auburndale: At the Auburndale Community Library, volunteers will be cleaning and painting indoors and beautifying the grounds outside. A Business Recycling Project in behind The Village Bank will collect paper and cardboard from village merchants for recycling.

Newton Centre: The Garden City Preservation Society’s volunteers gardeners will be working to beautify the planting areas around the historic Newton Centre “T” Station. [Read more →]