3/1/2024 0 Comments Collaspe and rewindYou’re knocking those buildings down so when they go there, they’ll have a place to park. You’re taking buildings that people want to go to. “‘This doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Councilor Willette, however, schooled him on the absurdity of the idea. The merchants advocated for the construction of what became the Herbert H. Cetlin to represent the Haverhill Downtown Merchants Association. Fiorentini had been hired more than 40 years ago by former WHAV owner Edward I. Willette, also a former mayor under a different city charter. The mayor’s view was shaped years before his foray into politics by City Councilor Joseph P. If they want to go there, they will find a place to park,” he said. The downtown has to be a destination that people want to go to. If you take up your retail space, the prime spots, for parking, you’re never in a million years going to redevelop your downtown. The key to re-developing a downtown, and we’re the leader on this, is less parking-not more parking. “The key to redeveloping a downtown-now I can tell it-is parking, but not the way people think. During a live appearance on WHAV’s “Win for Breakfast” program, Fiorentini said, for example, downtown’s renaissance came down to parking, but not in a conventional sense. It was the financial collapse of the city-owned Hale Hospital, part of a national trend, however, that turned simmering hopelessness into full-blown panic.Īs he prepares to leave office, the mayor detailed during an extensive WHAV interview how the city turned around. The downtown commercial district had been in decline for decades, worsened by such efforts to prop it up as the federal urban renewal demolition program. Fiorentini was sworn in almost 20 years ago against the backdrop of the largest municipal debt in state history, downtown buildings that had been mostly vacant for decades, the recent layoffs of 43 city workers and even ragged carpets in City Hall held together with duct tape.
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