Category — West Newton

The city zoning ordinances that require businesses to provide off-street parking have not been revised since 1963, the same year the Massachusetts Turnpike was being constructed through Newton, when cars ran on leaded gasoline that cost around 30 cents per gallon.

A lot has changed since then. These parking requirements have not. Today, they serve to repel new business and hamper existing businesses that wish to expand. [Read more →]

For all of the concerns voiced this year about parking meter rates and parking enforcement, the city has far more important parking issues to address. For starters, as a city, we need to make it easier for businesses, especially restaurants, to open in our village centers.

Today, almost every village center has vacant storefronts. Granted, these are difficult economic times, and the cost of a commercial lease in Newton presents no small challenge. While the city has no control over these market factors, our zoning ordinances do present an effective barrier to entry: outmoded parking laws that require businesses to provide off-street parking.

Don Levy (left), with his lawyer Michael Field, offers a slice of coconut pie at the Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown.

Of all village businesses, restaurants really take it on the chin. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at one of the business owners that make our village centers special.  If you have a favorite business you’d like to see profiled, please contact me or Daphne Collins.

Lumière: restaurant at 1293 Washington Street, West Newton Michael Leviton, who lives in Lexington, established Lumière in 1999. He has 25 employees.

What motivated you to get into business?
I sort of fell into the restaurant business, but once I started cooking seriously, I was hooked.

[Read more →]

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).

[Read more →]

Findings of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute pedestrian study illustrate that the city has room for improvement for safe walking in at least four villages.

The findings appear on the website of the League of Women Voters of Newton, in a new section addressing the group’s efforts to study pedestrian mobility.

You may download the findings for each village from the LWVN page, or download the PowerPoint presentation (large file) here: WPI presentation.

The league collaborated with the city’s planning department to sponsor this study by Worcester Polytechnic Institute students. The student group studied existing conditions and possible improvements to pedestrian crosswalks and other facilities in Newton Centre, Newton Corner, Chestnut Hill, and West Newton.

The study identified pedestrian problems in four villages, including 12 problems in Newton Corner.

Newton is working hard on refining its parking enforcement practices (see this in the TAB and this in the Globe).  We’re also thinking quite a bit about supply, particularly in Newton Centre:  development applications for Panera and more recently the train station diner hinged on parking supply questions.  And who hasn’t heard about dreams of parking garages in Newton Centre to get the parking out of the triangle at Beacon & Centre?

To their credit, a handful of aldermen have also tried to reform some parking regulations.  Last year, there was a short-lived attempt to create a pilot program for combined employee/residential permits on some streets near business districts.  Also in 2009, an item to reduce parking requirements for restaurants was docketed, but it was never discussed.  The most important reform, however, is still under consideration:  an in-lieu-of-parking fee system. [Read more →]