Worcester Opens Expanded Front Street
Rick Saia
An antique car inches its way up the lengthened Front Street on Tuesday afternoon, cheered on by some of the 200 who attended ceremonies marking the reopening of Front Street in downtown Worcester.
For the first time in more than 40 years, Front Street is now open in downtown Worcester, uniting the east and west ends of the city that had been cut off from each other by the former Worcester Galleria shops.
(Scroll down and click the image on left to view a video from the ceremony.)
Amid frigid lunch-time temperatures and a biting wind chill, federal, state and local officials applauded the more than 10 years of work that capped off a year of progress on the 12-acre CitySquare development that is now starting to take shape. Next month, the Unum Group is scheduled to move into its newly built Worcester headquarters at the corner of Foster Street and the newly paved Mercantile Street. Later in the year, Saint Vincent Hospital is scheduled to open its new cancer center.
"This day is particularly special," said Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray, the former mayor who helped push the CitySquare project along when he was in City Hall. "Today, we knit back together Worcester's downtown with its vibrant East Side neighborhoods," as well as Grafton Hill and the Canal District. "The fabric of that knitting is even stronger by the presence of a renovated Union Station, and a true intermodal transportation hub that will continue to drive growth."
Frederick H. Eppinger, CEO of The Hanover Insurance Group, a key investor in the downtown development work, credited the collaborative spirit between government and business. Worcester, he said, is an "oasis of collaboration in a desert of rhetoric."
Hanover invested in CitySquare "because we believe in the city, we believe in the viability of this project, and we believe in the importance of a downtown," Eppinger said.
Officials have blamed the Worcester Galleria shops, constructed in the late 1960s, and the later Worcester Common Fashion Outlet Mall, for cutting off downtown from other parts of the city. But beginning today, pedestrians can walk from City Hall down Front Street and directly to Union Station, Washington Square and Shrewsbury Street. At the end of today's half-hour-long ceremony, officials cut a symbolic red ribbon. Then, the guests parted to the sides of the street as a small parade of four vehicles – including two vintage cars - carried local World War II and Korean War veterans from the Washington Square end of the now lengthened street to downtown.
"The reopening of Front Street is a major milestone as we work to drive new economic growth into our downtown," City Manager Michael O'Brien said in a statement before the event. "This connection will fuel vitality and create an important link to our neighborhoods, businesses and colleges."
Video
Worcester Opens Longer Front Street
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