Downtown is already a ghost town and has been for a while.

Sounds like a convenient place to knock down some buildings and put up some low income housing.

Or convert the buildings there (Can they do it tastefully and be affordable?). I’m all about livable space.

Downtown Worcester needs a new indoor mall/food court like in kelly square. It gets cold here half the year. Make a good reason for people to go there to work and live.

Low income housing downtown sounds like the last thing downtown needs

This is like saying you're concerned about the automobile's impact on the trolley bus. Telecommuting has an impact on the amount of people entering downtown, but it isn't the root cause. Downtown is a pain in the ass. Parking is always difficult. If you're looking to open a business, services in downtown like banking are existent but poor.

Compare that to the biomed corridor running down Route 9. You're off the highway and pulling right into work. It's not telecommuting that's killing downtown, it's that downtown is an inconvenient place to do anything.

We really need to stop thinking things can 'go back to normal'. The old norm is how we got to the point were we have several impending climate, health, and societal crises with no effective organization or government to deal with them. Priorities and procedures need to radically shift in order to put environmental and societal sustainability before financial prosperity. If we don't change, then something's going to breakdown and if it's the environment or vital societal cooperation, then it's absolutely going to take the economy down with it.

They didn’t work out. The Mid Town Mall. Gone The Galleria. Gone The Greendale Mall. Gone Don’t get me started about Spags or the Movie Theaters that were in the City.

I dunno, I'd think just as many people would be staying in Worcester during the day because of their telecommuting as there would be keeping out of Worcester because of it, if not more. Worcester isn't exactly geared toward office jobs (even downtown), and there are plenty of workplaces in a half-hour radius of Worcester that do lend themselves to telecommuting. Downtown in particular may be struggling for other reasons (being less accessible than more spread out businesses, etc) but Worcester businesses as a whole should be seeing a net neutral effect from telecommuting.

"Normal" for me is an office job 30-60 minutes of driving away in some suburb, and aside from the most disruptive months of the pandemic I never really left it (occasional WFH but never full remote). If there were tech jobs downtown that suited me it would have a tremendous impact on my carbon footprint, but there aren't and never have been.

Heck, if my workplace office could be downtown I'd be commuting by bus daily and my car would sit unused 99% of days. Urban downtown offices aren't the enemy of environmentalism nearly as much as business parks in the middle of nowhere (just in spots along highways, etc) are.

The problem really is that so few people work there to frequent these businesses. Multiple downtown malls and theaters have failed as a result. And honestly outdoor storefronts are more popular than malls these days, even in New England winter. So just constructing a new mall without considering other factors just seems set up for failure.

What downtown doesn't have in abundance are larger office buildings that would make it competitive with the business parks along 495. It would also help keep it competitive if there were a reduction of commercial taxes specifically in the downtown area.

Need higher paying jobs in downtown for young people in finance and (tech?) I guess .. even tho I believe there will be another tech bubble at some point

i'm concerned about the city manager's impact on downtown.

It's a lost cause, and has been for 30 years. Downtown Worcester will never thrive. The Canal District was doing okay, but then we built that fucking ballpark.

Also: Reminder that Batista is City Manager due to old-fashioned Worcester cronyism and nothing else.

Plus there’s many homeless people begging when you come out, I hate it after dark

I moved to the Worcester area BECAUSE of telecommuting.

From what I've heard, they're difficult to convert due to different setups and building standards.

I used to work downtown for 8 years. I loved every second of it. I knew all the business up and down the lower part of main from city hall down to courthouse. It was a great place to walk during lunch- I was a city kid- so walking on my lunch never scared me. It was the place I grew up.

When the pandemic shut everything down- that was the last time I was able to really enjoy downtown and all the restaurants and little shops- mid town mall may have been abandoned in most stores- but it was still fun to walk through to remember earlier days when it was the place to go! There aren’t enough people to care about the city’s history- and all it’s accomplishments and successes- instead all That is focused on is crime and such- which is everywhere. But for some reason - this city has always gotten torn apart By its residents- more Likely that no one with influence or money to do something about preservation. Why remodel and save its history when you can just plow It over and pay lots of people lots of money to make it look like shit. Sorry- I just miss the beauty of Worcester- it’s there- it’s just long been forgotten.

How about high paying jobs that actually take care of the people we love rather than “tech”

Agreed not a big “tech” person

Well, hello friend! I have always worked in human services and could never understand why the need for all the education for such little pay…. Unless Of course you are a doc or nurse or radiologist or pharmacist- those jobs MAKE money while taking care of humans - pays very little- no wonder there is so much theft from elders in care- or robbing of patients savings- the people hired to care for them- can’t even make ends meet to begin with… unless they have 2 or 3 other jobs on top of it….

This is why I’m happy to have left New England, as your city rots from the inside out you find it necessary to grandstand your ideology.

We need lots of mixed zoning and small shops / things to do downtown (besides bars), rather than large office buildings for insurance company headquarters or whatever. People like being able to walk to things and with the amount of housing units being built right now, we're not going to be able to have every person have a car and still have a downtown that's pleasant to be in. We should dedicate the bottom floors of a couple of the new buildings to supermarkets and then spend a bunch of money on incentives for local people to start the small, unique businesses that make people want to actually live in a city. Having a lot of telecommuters is great for the city (and much easier on our infrastructure) - we just need things that will compel people to leave their houses and spend money when they're done working.

Just want to add that the “homeless” are human too- and if you can’t help- offer a kind word or a salutation. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness- you don’t know the circumstances behind what brought them to this space in their lives- go easy- share a smile. I am not wealthy but I still stop and ask if there is anything else that I could help with - and almost always I have been asked for blankets… fear is what you make of it.

If anything, telecommuting should be HELPING Worcester, as we’re definitely getting people moving here from Boston. The big issue is lack of retail. Someone mentioned that Maker to Main would fit in in downtown Hudson, which it would. Because that main street has enough retail where people could “make a day of it.” Worcester doesn’t have that

Make more available parking and people will want to come to downtown.

Parking is that subconscious decision on where you’ll want to be going for the night. If there’s no convenient parking, let alone safe parking at night, most people visiting the city or really just not from the downtown area won’t be willing to take a 10-15 minute walk from some random dark sketchy street parking.

New England as a region has the best standard of living in the country… what are you talking about?

I moved from Boston to the greater Worcester area specifically because I’m full time remote. This is such a tired lazy argument.

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Really telling on himself and his priorities when someone's like, "We should maybe focus on the environment and what's best for people instead of corporate profits," and the response is to bitch about they're being "ideological."

It’s amazing what counts as “political” nowadays.

No commercial business is going to be investing in Massachusetts or Worcester! The state has destroyed small business. Nobody is going to pay the taxes here. We now have a state of the elite business class in Boston and it's not growing or going anywhere else. In fact you will have all you can do just to keep what you have left.

It will turn into blocks of low income housing in short order. I was going to add if they don't stop immigration, but alas it makes no difference. You don't actually think the illegals will end up in Boston now do you. With the global elite and wealth situated in the hub.. next stop is Wista!

More like expensive and detrimental to a return on investment.

There is nothing worth parking for... Ballpark and maybe a show at the Hanover and that's that.

You don't need to knock down any buildings, there's already over a million square feet of parking and vacant lots on or around N Main St.

That too. Unless ppl like the plethora of hole in the wall dive bars lol

This. I spend more money outside Worcester than I do inside Worcester. Marlborough has retail, Shrewsbury has retail, but Worcester not so much.

The mercantile garage definitely isn’t empty during the week. When I’m in my office (right behind city hall) my lunch options are a giant ziggy bomb, $25 sandwich from 110 grill, or sub-rate falafel from Shwarma Palace. CVS is the only place to buy anything that’s not lunch - have you been in that CVS? It’s utterly depressing and not well stocked.

If there was more in the area I might spend more time in my office. And downtown is suffering, but Worcester in general is pretty sad when it comes to places to spend money.