From Black Mark To Blessing On The Banks Of The Blackstone | Downtown plan tries to strike balance between mill town, tourist town
PHOTO/COURTESY
The southern end of downtown Uxbridge.
The detailed, 35-page âVision for Downtown Uxbridgeâ report is the result of a process and potentially the start of a project that could make the destruction of the Bernat Mill complex by fire seem like a blessing in disguise.
âIt's like what every town planner reads about in textbooks, but never gets to work with,â said Megan T. DiPrete, Uxbridge's director of planning and economic development. Now, a steering committee of local businessmen must âreally take ownership of this document so it doesn't sit on the shelf,â she said.
The burning of the Bernat mill last year was the catalyst for the town to commission the vision report, which was written by the Cecil Group of Boston and is based somewhat on a 2004 âMaster Plan Visionâ for Uxbridge's small downtown area. Sixty-five businesses called the 400,000-square-foot Bernat Mill home.
But the report notes that the Bernat Mill was always isolated from the rest of downtown Uxbridge. Motorists didn't always have an easy time finding their way to the Bernat property from the downtown area across the Blackstone River. To pedestrians, the complex seems entirely inaccessible and the route there from downtown is âunwelcoming and does not provide an inviting connection between South Main Street and the Bernat Mill,â the report said.
In fact, âa lot of people didn't even know it was there, which is a strange thing to say about a 350,000-square-foot mill,â said Mike Cove, owner of Cove Insurance and member of the steering committee.
With the mill gone and its owners committed to rebuilding on the site, its destruction provided the town with an opportunity to raise downtown Uxbridge from the ashes, almost literally, and in a way that establishes connections between the mill and the downtown's main thoroughfares, Route 122 and Route 16.
Dressing Up
Barry Desruisseaux, a local real estate agent and member of the steering committee, said the rebuilding of the Bernat Mill is currently the main focus of efforts to remake downtown Uxbridge. âWe want to pull it all together and make it more of a destination,â he said, adding that they want to âget the foot traffic and keep them all in one area.â
Cove said the goal is for visitors to downtown Uxbridge and residents alike to have an easy time getting from the mill to Main Street and back.
DiPrete said the makeup of the steering committee was interesting in its own right. It's made up of some of the town's younger residents and business leaders. But the way it has approached the remaking of Uxbridge is also notable, she said. âIt's really an identity analysis,â DiPrete said. âWhat do you want to change, or protect and retain?â
âIn a lot of ways, what I look for may be different than what someone in their 60s or 70s might look for,â Cove, 35, said. âBut Uxbridge is growing and its demographics are getting younger.â
The report lays out preliminary cost estimates totaling nearly $6.4 million for a few specific projects to be included in the revitalization effort. Those projects include $1.2 million in streetscape improvements, as much as $3 million in improvements to a downtown railroad bridge - part of the uninviting route between South Main Street and the mill - and as much as $1 million for a pedestrian bridge.
The streetscape improvements would be a great place to start, Desruisseaux said. He said it's just a matter of convincing downtown property owners, which includes the town itself, to contribute to the effort. There are also characteristics that the steering committee would like to remain downtown, even if they aren't completely practical.
One of those âdefining characteristicsâ is the âjogâ in Route 16, as DiPrete describes it.
âIt comes downtown, and it's a bit of a bottleneck,â she said. âBut if you straighten the road, it would make the town a blink.â
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