July 26th, 2021 | Story by Gordon Dritschilo } Originally Posted in the Rutland Herald
Now that trains are coming to Rutland, local officials say they are thinking about what passengers will see when they disembark.
“When you step off that train, where do you go?” Rutland Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Brennan Duffy asked on Monday. “Where is it logical you would leave and walk to.”
Duffy said the Rutland Regional Planning Commission was working on designs for improving the area around the station to make it more aesthetically pleasing, provide a “sense of arrival” and improve pedestrian safety.
“We’ve had at least one maybe two internal conversations with people at Brixmor (owners of the downtown shopping plaza), who control most of that,” Duffy said. “There seems to be some agreement that we’d like to see something there.”
Representatives of Brixmor were not immediately available Monday; the regional planning commission did not respond to inquiries about the designs.
Duffy said there was not a lot the city could do past Evelyn Street without Brixmor’s buy-in.
“Brixmor controls that area,” Duffy said. “They have their own way of looking at things at the corporate level. ... That’s always the struggle, competing priorities between different entities. They seem to get that what’s good for downtown is good for the plaza.”
Duffy pointed to the installation of two electric vehicle chargers near the train station as a sign on Brixmor’s interest in improving the property.
The plans would be the first new vision for the area since a redesign centered on plans for a hotel at the edge of the plaza were abandoned. Duffy said those designs, which included turning Evelyn Street into a pedestrian zone, only worked in concert with the development proposals.
“That really relied on that major investment of the hotel with shopping and restaurants on the lower levels,” he said.
The newer plans, Duffy said, are less radical, focused on greening up the area around the train station.
He also said with wayfinding signs going up around downtown, it made sense to put a kiosk at the station with a map marking out all of downtown’s attractions.