Town, Meet Gown

Evan Dobelle, the recently installed president of Westfield State College, is no stranger to comprehensive town-gown initiatives, or what he calls “partnerships in urban America.” He’s helped orchestrate them in places ranging from Lowell, Mass. to Honolulu, Hawaii. His latest project is in the so-called Whip City, where he intends to create more student housing downtown, thus providing a boost to an underachieving central business district.

Confidence.

That’s the word Evan Dobelle uses when describing the first stages of a plan for Westfield State College’s student housing expansions into the frayed downtown of its host city.

“We all have certain degrees of expertise,” the 19th president of the college told BusinessWest. “Mine has always been about partnerships in urban America. I really think that’s the reality of the future. We can’t proceed in business as silos.”

Since he first came to the helm of the college in December 2007, Dobelle has been active in an ambitious, yet extremely popular and very realistic plan to integrate the college and the city’s downtown.

Westfield Mayor Michael Boulanger told BusinessWest recently that he has lived in the city for 32 years, and, “frankly, it seems that for 31 of those years, Westfield State College might as well have been an island 1,000 miles away, because it had no involvement with the community whatsoever.”

But since the first meeting between the mayor and the new president in January 2008, just after Boulanger took office, that large gap has been closing, figuratively if not yet literally.

“It really started with my thoughts on moving a used bookstore downtown,” said Boulanger, “and finding reasons to bring students downtown, maybe earmarking some properties for student apartments. And he came back that it was his desire to fully build student housing in the downtown.”

What is underway currently is the first wave of a plan for WSC to utilize downtown buildings for student housing, with that development the catalyst for urban renewal, as well as for further college facilities to integrate into the city center.

Whipping Up Some Momentum

Dobelle is no stranger to bridging colleges and their communities. Prior to his appointment at WSC, and as president of four other colleges, he coordinated expanding relationships between the schools and their host municipalities from as far afield as Lowell to Honolulu.

Acknowledging Westfield’s current downtown, Dobelle said that it is not realistic to think that one can simply build or expand service-sector businesses there without a population to access them. “In Westfield,” he said, “I see the students’ role as ‘permanent tourists.’ They have the disposable income to attract those restaurants, movie theaters, and coffee houses as opposed to trying to attract those businesses first, when there is no base.”

Boulanger agrees completely.

“The city has for many years tried to stimulate or revitalize downtown by getting businesses down there,” he said, “thinking that that is what would attract people. But it really doesn’t work that way. In reality, the way it works is that a consistent population of people with money to spend will attract the businesses.”

Initially, the plan is to develop student housing in existing apartment buildings downtown, with the potential for new service-sector businesses at street level. Such a primary, and realistic, goal speaks to giving confidence to the community that such a project can exist on Main Street, rather than a drafting table.

“When you see something happening,” said Dobelle, “when you see a crane in the air, you see a business open, or a ribbon cut, it’s a big deal. When that happens, I think that begins the flow to Westfield, which is a town of growth, and a town of relative affluence. It’s all doable, but it’s all predicated on that first contract we sign for student housing. If we even have a contract which says that in one year’s time we’re going to have 100 students living downtown, you’ll see it all happen. It will be a gold rush.”

And if all goes according to plan, it won’t be long before one sees construction workers on city streets. Boulanger said that the college funded an architect to conceptualize designs for various possibilities downtown, employing the services of William Rawn Associates of Boston, which has had great success at both Williams College and Northeastern University, among other prestigious clients.

According to Boulanger, an RFP (request for proposal) has been issued to developers, and the response numbers remain private and with the Division of Capital Asset Management, the governing body for construction of public works projects for the Commonwealth. But the mayor says that “it is my understanding that the response has been very positive, and that the numbers are favorable.”

What makes this initial project a winning situation for just about everyone involved begins with the developers themselves, said the mayor. From their perspective, there is a guaranteed full occupancy of residential property, with promised 10-year leases from the college. Further, by privately owning these structures, the property continues to exist as taxable real estate for the city.

Dobelle called this an excellent opportunity to make state funds work in the revitalization of the city. “This is the ability to leverage tax dollars, going to a state school, in a public and private partnership that further leverages future development of other taxpaying industries, to broaden the tax base for the city.”

The president cited the long and laborious process to build new dormitories on campus as a motivating factor for casting his eye on the city center. “We can get students downtown in dormitory housing in less than a year, whereas a new dormitory to be built on campus would take us four,” he said.

Initially, Dobelle strives for housing approximately 100-200 students, but, he said, “I’d like to see that number over the next three to five years grow to more than 1,000.”

And of course, for the city, there are those ‘permanent tourists’ — students with all the needs for the services and facilities necessary to stimulate strong business opportunities.

But Wait, There’s More

Dobelle is optimistic that, with the student housing going forward, future interest in the city isn’t far behind. He mentioned an associate of William Rawn’s, Gideon Lester, the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., who is very positive about an arts rebirth in the city.

“His vision,” said Dobelle, “is that Westfield, at the entrance to the Berkshires, is an ideal place for creative people of all backgrounds — be it music, voice, dance, playwrights — who are simply outpriced in downtown New York or Boston.

“We are equidistant from both of those cities, and thus can become a community of artists, with performing space and practice space that’s affordable, in a place that could eventually become a ‘hot’ city.”

“It doesn’t take much to transform that downtown into a hip place,” he continued, “with coffeehouses, black-box theaters, and perhaps, eventually, if we can make the numbers pencil out, a performing-arts center. Not of huge scale, but a few hundred seats.”

Dobelle acknowledged that, with a successful pipeline into the city, the likelihood of a performing-arts center for the school would be far greater. With the economy in its current condition, he said, the reality is that it would be close to 10 years at the earliest before the campus could see construction of a new theater space.

In City Hall, Boulanger agreed that housing is just the first step. Thinking back on those first few meetings with Dobelle, the mayor remembered a lunch he and the president attended.

“He asked me what I thought about the potential for the performing-arts branch of his college downtown, and I think all I said was ‘absolutely,’” said Boulanger.

There are numerous existing venues downtown which, with little effort, could be working performance spaces, Boulanger said. He cited the First Congregational Church and the Westfield Women’s Club as two spots for performance, but also added, “that’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of other vacant facilities that would accommodate other arts, galleries, or arts classrooms.”

With a larger student population downtown, Boulanger sees this as the perfect time for a project he has long wanted to see in his city — a multimodal transportation center. While this would better service the needs of the college students away from campus, the mayor sees this as another step in the ongoing revitalization and reassessment of the city’s downtown infrastructure. He mentioned that, in a recent meeting with Mass. Secretary of Transportation James Aloisi, the administrator also agreed.

What Boulanger sees as another potential benefit to the city is a new look at reorganizing the traffic plans for downtown. “There’s basically a four-lane highway going through the center of the city,” he said. “And there’s not much there to slow it down. I think that reconfiguring parking and traffic on Elm Street could go a long way toward making the streets safe for both cars and pedestrians.”

Course of Action

Ultimately, both men feel confident in each other’s role in what has been a meeting of like minds. Dobelle said that, so far, he is excited by the progress in the first stage of the student housing initiative in the city. “If Westfield becomes that vibrant place we expect it to be, then it’s only going to benefit us.”

And in City Hall, Boulanger is happy to see his city turn into one of those college towns he traveled to during the preparation for his mayoral campaign.

“Look at Keene, N.H.,” he said. “In the last 15 years, a collaboration between the college and that city created a great deal of vitality, with stores, restaurants, all walks of citizenry. It’s a great place to visit.”

He expects the same for Westfield, thanks, in large part, to those ‘permanent tourists.’