Back to Article Index | Next column
Volume 114, Number 337 - Tuesday, October 27, 1998
Looking for 2 rms, riv vu in Mdltn
by John Friedlander
Since returning to Middletown from the west coast, I've been looking for a place to live. My dear old friends Josh and Julie gave me couch space in Enfield for weeks, and my fine new friends Steve and Janet have generously loaned me a room in their huge Meriden home. Meanwhile, I've been bothering Middletown real estate agents to find what I'm looking for: a nice two bedroom studio-style loft downtown. So far, they've come up empty-handed.
This has underlined a difference between Middletown and my former west coast home: where and how we allow people to live in relation to downtown.
Out west, the downtown is filled with two to five-story buildings with retail or office space on the ground floor and mixed office and residential upstairs. There is almost no section of the small downtown grid that doesn't have residential units in it. There is an upscale, mixed use retail, office and residential eight-story building planned for a plot just off the main downtown grid. The city council and planning board is very concerned with maintaining the vitality of the downtown area by ensuring that residential space is preserved.
In contrast, I can't find any housing on Middletown's Main Street between Washington Street and the South Green, between DeKoven Drive and Broad Street. It's true that residential neighborhoods aren't far off. Main Street north of Washington has several buildings with inexpensive apartments in them. I used to live in the diverse neighborhood northwest of Main. Wesleyan's students and faculty cluster west and southwest of Main, and the River's Edge residential condo tower stands between the south end of Main and the river. But on the most central few blocks of Main Street itself, nada.
Our northern metro neighbor Hartford has struggled for years with the barren post-5pm streets of the city's core. The biggest single factor is the near absence of residential units in the immediate downtown area. To be sure, Middletown isn't as badly off. Our downtown and surrounding areas are far more walkable than Hartford's, and parking is much easier. But our downtown vitality would be improved by increasing residential density in concentrated downtown neighborhoods.
The urban planner's rueful joke is that there are two kinds of growth people hate: density and sprawl. I admit that I used to dream of a remote house in the country, but now I want to try density. Sprawl may look nice on postcards, but it doesn't meet today's economic and lifestyle needs. Driving to get everywhere other than home is a waste of time, money, gas and risk. Paying higher taxes to support more over-extended municipal services doesn't sound very good either. Now I'm looking for that cool place downtown where I can park my car for most of the week and walk to work and the market. I'll save time, money, and gas, and greet my neighbors on the sidewalk instead of scowling at them from behind rolled-up car windows.
A lot has changed downtown while I was gone. Business has picked up, vacant buildings have filled up, and the overall economy has improved. From what I've heard, it's easy to find business tenants for Main Street properties, although I scratch my head when I look at the former grocery space in Metro Square, the vacant offices in Riverview Center, and the empty storefronts on Main north of Washington.
I also see the open space above the short buildings on Main Street between Main Street Market and Regal Men's Shop, and wish I could live there, with a view of Main Street on one end, and the river on the other end.
Ken Gronbach's playful "vendetta" with the Wesleyan community, with which he hopes to draw more shoppers to Main Street and his Main Street Market, is a cute way to make a point that our downtown is a critical element of Middletown's municipal tapestry. But I'd love to see a few downtown building owners go even further and embrace my vision of putting more residential space right on Main Street, above the stores between Washington Street and the South Green.
Back to Article Index | Next column
Though I wrote this column, the Middletown Press owns it now, including the copyright associated with it. The column appears here by permission, and no other publication is allowed without express permission from the publisher.