UMass To Design
Tourism potential too long ignored, prof. says
Tourism may not be the first thing to come to mind when considering either Southbridge or the Quinebaug River.
That could change after a seven-week design project by a group of graduate students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst landscape architecture department. The project is scheduled to begin March 28 and conclude with a presentation at UMass.
Building by building, the town itself is being revitalized and the Quinebaug is no longer a polluted mess. But it is neglected, and has been for decades.
Cultural Tourism
But the industrial, mill town corridor along the Quinebaug holds a lot of interest for Peter Kumble, the UMass professor who will lead the project. Through history, scenery and sheer quaintness, towns along the corridor have the potential to draw tourists, but in recent decades, town officials haven’t paid much attention to that tourism potential.
Kumble said the students he brings to Southbridge would develop “a plan for a greenway, just like a consultant would do,” around the ideas of “eco, heritage and cultural tourism.”
These types of low-impact tourism aren’t an economic cure-all for Southbridge or any other town. But the idea behind designing a greenway along the Quinebaug for Southbridge is to provide what Kumble calls an “authentic” experience strongly connected to the town, its history and culture, that will keep tourists coming back.
Margaret Morrissey, a Southbridge property owner and director of the Jacob Edwards Library in town, said Southbridge, like many small towns, has been slow to react to an opportunity like the one presented by Kumble’s class.
“The community and the town are behind the project,” Morrissey said, and she is trying to get both ordinary residents and the town government to be more active in supporting the project and in town development overall.
She said she was trying to form a community group to support and follow the UMass project and trying to convince the town to donate $1,000 toward printing and other costs associated with publishing Kumble’s report.
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