The New Charles Bardo Memorial Garage [photo: HCE]
City planning. What is it? Well, it’s a term, isn’t it? City planning is a term that implies that in any given city there is a person (or people) actively looking ahead to that city’s needs – needs that are ever-changing due to shifts in the city’s population, income, educational needs, etc. Is city planning a good thing? Of course it is. It’s what should prevent the building of two-lane roads where four-lane roads will be needed within ten years. It’s what should prevent the building of a brand new high school that can accommodate 1,000 students when census information shows that there will be 2,000 high school-age residents within five years. In short, it’s supposed to utilize a combination of forward thinking, a knowledge of local history, and common sense to provide an infrastructure that suits a city’s residents, business owners, and visitors as the city goes through its natural changes over the course of time.
But… a city planning office is not an independent entity. It’s part of local government, and as such, should be expected to be open and direct when making important decisions that affect either the quality of life of the city’s residents, or the ability of local business owners to make a living.
Making changes to a city that could potentially have an adverse impact on local business owners without so much as consulting them first can lead to frustrations.Where are we going with this? No further than Main Street, where The Cow’s Outside Leather Shop and Music Guild are located. One version of the story goes like this:
It was decided at some point that more parking was needed for residents and shoppers in Danbury City Center. According to Russ Mumma, who has owned Music Guild for 40 years, many local business owners thought that a parking lot might be a fine addition to the area, but few of them had any idea of what was actually coming. And when it turned out that the plans called for a 385 car five-story garage and office complex in honor of Charles A. Bardo, the former executive director of the Danbury Parking Authority, most were horrified that instead of adding to the atmosphere of the area, the garage promised to alter it radically.
Before the garage went up, before a single car could even be accommodated, the city decided that five curbside parking spaces had to go unfortunately for Mumma these wre spaces that were utilized by the customers of the Leather Shop and Music Guild.
At first it just looked like a beautification project when the city began tearing up the asphalt and laying a new grass strip outside the stores. Then it became clear that the parking meters that had been removed were not being replaced. Area proprietors grumble that when City Hall was pressed for a reason, they claimed that by order of the Department of Transportation, the stretch of road where the meters had been removed had to be left free of parked cars because a new stop light was being installed at the curb (there is no stop light to date). Some merchants felt they lost five much-needed parking spaces in order to accommodate a thus far non-existent stop light outside a monstrous garage that may not well-serve the parking needs of their customers.
To business owners like Mumma, that sounded like either no planning at all, or an attempt to make it more difficult for his customers to park anywhere but the garage.
Asked Mumma, “How will my customers who buy heavy equipment get it all the way back to their cars now? And is it very likely that someone who used to park outside for 90 seconds to buy a set of guitar strings will now pay to park down the block and turn that same simple purchase into a more time-consuming, expensive proposition? Will students want to walk alone to their cars in the garage after finishing a lesson later in the day?” According to Mumma, a little knowledge of local history might have helped the city with its planning – a few years back, when the median divider was erected, a local German deli was almost immediately put out of business. Several business owners on this block fear this might be their future, too.
To add insult to injury, (adds Mumma), as a business owner, it was his tax dollars that paid for this grass monument to the space where his customers used to park, as well as the salaries of those who planned and executed this move without informing him ahead of time. And those same people who found it so easy to do all this, he fears, will claim it’s next to impossible to undo now.
