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Volume 115, Number 100 - Tuesday, January 12, 1999
This window needs cleaning
by John Friedlander
First, I need to correct a mistake I made. Last week I might have left the impression that Washington Street doesn't have sidewalks. It does. Except for a stretch between High Street and the railroad bridge where the sidewalk only runs along the north side, Washington Street has sidewalks on both sides of the street from Dekoven Drive to Staples. I apologize for my error.
Last week I explained why I write so much about Main Street, and why Main Street is so important. I also said that Main Street needs some improvement, but I didn't offer any suggestions. Here's one.
I used to supervise the front desk of a major hotel in the Hartford area. To boast just a bit, my crew and I were part of the reason guests kept returning and referring their friends to us. We provided great personalized service. We made people feel comfortable, and we took care of them like family. But no matter how hard we worked, occasionally mistakes would happen that compromised a guest's comfort. At those times, our hard-earned reputation was at serious risk.
The hotel staff lived in fear of "shoppers," employees of travel directories traveling incognito to figure out how many stars or diamonds we'd be awarded in their next travel guide. A mistake made with a shopper would haunt us for a long, long time, so we worked extra hard to make sure every guest was happy.
Shoppers would use all sorts of tricks to test all different departments. They'd make strange special requests and see how well the front office handled them. They'd order items not on the restaurant menu to test the kitchen. They'd pretend the TV was broken and see how long before an engineer showed up to check it. They'd drop lint or a paper clip on the floor in a hallway, or make a mess in a public restroom and see how long it took housekeeping to get the mess cleaned up. Challenged by sneaky shoppers, the clear lesson was that details matter, everything counts. I'm happy to say we did very well.
Some people think cities get better when big things happen. Big things like stadiums being built, for instance. I'm not so sure about the stadium plans in Hartford -- I think the risks are just as great or greater than the potential benefits, and there are about 375 million other ways I'd prefer we spent that money.
One thing I'm sure of though: small things matter. The sum of the little facets of a city experience create the overall impression a city leaves in our minds and our hearts.
There's a small but smelly facet of Middletown that needs cleaning up. We need to get rid of the garbage on Main Street.
A lot of people have worked hard over many years to clean up the streetscape, and their continuing efforts are paying off. The new traffic lights put fewer physical and visual obstacles on sidewalks. Store owners have done lots of good work making their establishments look good. Business signs are in good shape. Window displays are attractive. Planters and benches should appear soon, courtesy of committed volunteers and community-minded business owners.
But every afternoon, garbage starts piling up in front of businesses in anticipation of the next morning's pickup. These piles obstruct shoppers' paths from their cars to the sidewalk, since parking meters make great pile-stabilizers. The problem is particularly unappetizing in front of restaurants, which put out the smelliest garbage of all.
This stinks.
I'm sure that picking up the garbage is a breeze for the sanitation crew that can cruise down Main Street in the early morning hours and clean up the whole street very quickly. But lots of people use Main Street between the time the garbage is deposited and the time it is picked up, and their impression of the place is trashed by having to step around piles of refuse. Believe it or not, Middletown is actually growing a night life, and having to avoid bags of trash on the way to dinner at any of our fine restaurants can be an appetite-killer.
Main Street is Middletown's storefront window. Shoppers deciding whether to get out of their cars and go into our stores, or new business owners deciding whether to locate here may be deterred. Garbage stacked up in front of stores turns people off.
We have laws to punish people for defacing buildings with graffiti. We cite and fine landlords for allowing their properties to decay. We have noise ordinances to punish aural assaults. We fine people for littering, and for unauthorized dumping. Yet we ignore a regularly occurring sloppy mess dumped in shoppers' paths on our showcase Main Street. This doesn't make sense.
Main Street business owners should deposit their garbage behind their stores, and the sanitation department should pick it up from there. The heart of our downtown should never be allowed to look like a dump.
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