Page 12 - BusinessWest September 14 2020

Editorial
MCan Springfield Turn Back the Clock?
BusinessWest
PUBLISHER
John Gormally [email protected]
•••••
EDITOR
& ASSOCIATE
PUBLISHER
George O’Brien [email protected]
•••••
SALES MANAGER & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Kate Campiti [email protected] ••••• SENIOR WRITER Joseph Bednar [email protected] ••••• ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS Kate Campiti [email protected]
Kathleen Plante [email protected]
•••••
ART DIRECTOR
Mike Nasuti [email protected]
•••••
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Danielle Fox [email protected]
•••••
MARKETING &
EVENTS DIRECTOR
Bevin Peters [email protected]
•••••
OFFICE MANAGER
Cindy Sears [email protected]
Entire contents of this publication are Copyright
©2020, and cannot be reprinted in whole or part without special written per- mission by the publisher. Yearly subscription price is $45.00. BusinessWest assumes no responsibility for mistakes in advertise- ments, but will make corrections if written notice is received within 7 days of publication date. BusinessWest reserves the right to reject an advertise- ment it deems misleading or inappropriate.
1441 Main Street Springfield, MA 01103 (413) 781-8600 Fax (413) 781-3930
ayor Domenic Sarno is certainly confident that the commercial office space downtown. Right now, the larger tow- Springfield will rebound from all the COVID-19 pan- ers are mostly quiet as companies continue to have many of their demic has thrown at it the past seven months or so. employees work remotely. And there is speculation that they will
As BusinessWest spoke with him recently (see story on page 6), remain mostly quiet as businesses adapt to a new way of doing
he said at least a few times that he expects the City of Homes to bounce back — and quickly — when COVID is over (whenever that is). This isn’t surprising, obviously; this is what mayors do. And he bases that optimism on the many projects currently in progress, new initiatives likely to move onto and then off the drawing board, and the considerable amount of momentum the city had created before the pandemic changed the landscape back in late winter.
We share his optimism to some degree, but the future of Spring- field right now is a giant question mark. And before we go any further, we need to say that most all urban areas, even Boston
and New York, are in the same boat and facing the same daunting question.
Which is ... what will things look like when this is all over?
In Springfield, the hope is that things will look a whole lot like they did in mid-January. Back then, there were events happen-
ing, like Red Sox Winter Weekend. The Thunderbirds were packing them in at the MassMutual Center, while MGM was drawing decent crowds at the casino and bringing people to the city for concerts and shows, benefiting the downtown restaurants and bars. The downtown office towers weren’t full, certainly, but there were plenty of people working in the central business district — enough to sup- port the retail and hospitality businesses in that area.
Now ... none of that is happening as the city tries to hang on and fight its way through this. The question is, can Springfield turn back the clock to start of this year and essentially pick up where it left off?
Perhaps, but it won’t be easy. And a big factor in this equation is
Opinion
things and considerably downsize their space.
Again, this isn’t an issue specific to Springfield. Boston is facing
the same problem, and, to a large extent, so is New York.
But having a critical mass of workers in a central business dis- trict is one of the key ingredients in any success formula for such
an area. The others are having people live in that district and hav- ing them come to visit. All three are important, and without one, more pressure gets put on the other two.
There are housing projects coming together in the broad down- town area — at Court Square and at the former Willys-Overland building on Chestnut Street, to name a couple notable efforts — with the promise of more to come. And there are strong hopes that the vibrancy seen when there were shows at MGM and Symphony Hall and hockey games at the MassMutual Center will return once the pandemic is behind us — again, whenever that is.
But will this be enough to make the downtown area — and the city as a whole — thrive and regain the momentum lost to the pandemic?
Again, perhaps — but it seems logical that the city will not sim- ply be able to turn back the clock; instead, it will likely have to turn the clock forward and find new and intriguing uses for the office space downtown and for the commercial spaces vacated by busi- nesses that didn’t survive COVID-19.
Seven months into the pandemic, we know what we’ve lost, and we know what we have to somehow regain. The question for Springfield — and all urban areas — is ‘what can we expect when all this over?’ And right now, no one really knows. v
Our Rivers Don’t Need Plastic
TBy Stacey Lennard
he Connecticut River Conservancy
(CRC) hosts its 24th annual
Source to Sea Cleanup throughout September. CRC is asking you to sign
up and help spread the word about our plastic problem and the impact on our rivers. In addition to annually coordi- nating thousands of volunteers to clean up trash in our rivers, CRC continues to work toward solutions to the persistent problem of trash pollution. Plastic bags, bottles, and polystyrene (Styrofoam) are consistently the most-found items dur- ing the Source to Sea Cleanup, and these items never fully break down in the envi- ronment.
You can help show the problem to help solve the problem. Take a photo, video, or make art inspired by river beauty or river pollution. Get creative, use #RiverWitness, #PurgeThePlastic, and tag CRC on social media. CRC will add your images to an online mosaic photo display and video. Select images will be used to call on deci- sion makers to enact trash solutions to keep trash out of our rivers. Show them this is important to you. Speak up for your
rivers.
According to CRC, the solution to this
problem is to redesign our economy so there isn’t waste in the first place. “It’s time businesses step up to voluntarily do the right thing by offering more sustainable, reusable, recyclable, and compostable options,” said Andrew Fisk, CRC’s execu- tive director. “Vermont and Connecticut are leading the way with their recent state- wide bans on single-use plastics. This
is particularly important due to China’s recent import restrictions on plastic waste. The cost of plastic waste is beginning to outweigh its usefulness.”
Other solutions are to make recycling easy, effective, and widely accessible; to increase the use of effective incentives
like ‘bottle bills’ for recycling aluminum, plastic, and glass containers; and to disin- centivize Styrofoam, especially foam dock floats in favor of enclosed foam or non- foam dock materials that won’t send plastic chunks into rivers.
We all have a responsibility to solve this problem,” Fisk said. “We are responsible as consumers to make good choices in
how we purchase and dispose of products. Manufacturers, businesses, and govern- ment are also responsible, and it’s time they do their part. By working together, we can make a real difference for our rivers. These ideas are going to take time, decades even. And we’ll keep at it as long as it takes. But our rivers need change now.”
Over the past 23 years, Source to Sea Cleanup volunteers have removed more than 1,167 tons of trash from our rivers. The Source to Sea Cleanup is a river clean- up coordinated by CRC in all four states
of the 410-mile Connecticut River basin. Each fall, thousands of volunteers remove tons of trash along rivers, streams, parks, boat launches, trails, and more. Eversource, USA Waste & Recycling, and All American Waste are the lead Source to Sea Cleanup sponsors.
For more information or to register for the event, visit www.ctriver.org/cleanup. v
Stacey Lennard is Source to Sea Cleanup coordinator for the Connecticut River Conservancy.
12 SEPTEMBER 14, 2020
OPINION
BusinessWest