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Date: 6/21/2021
NORTHAMPTON – On June 15, Northampton residents joined a Zoom call to receive an update on the city’s Downtown Northampton Rapid Recovery Program as the city looks to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Karl Alexander, the Downtown Northampton Rapid Recovery Program project manager with Civic Space Collaborative, explained the goal of the project is to create project ideas to help the city recover from COVID-19.
“The Rapid Recovery plan is designed to support our business community through actionable, project-based recovery recommendations unique to the individual economic challenges of COVID-19 related impacts in downtown Northampton,” he said.
To start the presentation, Alexander recapped the first phase of the project, which ended in May.
“Phase 1, which we conducted between mid-March through May, was to kick off the planning process with a diagnostic where we conducted business surveying regarding impacts from COVID, conducted an analysis of baseline data and had conversations with key stakeholders in the community to understand the current state coming out of the pandemic,” he said.
After starting with an initial list of 100 ideas, Alexander said the list has been narrowed down to around 25.
“We will be developing project rubrics that will be guided by additional consultants and subject experts that will lead into the final plans,” he said.
Along with helping design the projects, Alexander said his team would also be helping businesses and other organizations find funding through external grants.
“Our goal is to help local project stakeholders identify external funding sources as best as possible where appropriate. Depending on the project size and category, a couple examples of pots of funding where these projects can be supported could be Community Development Block Grants, Mass Development Grants, the state’s Shared Streets and Spaces program, and other resources as a result of the American Rescue Act of 2021,” he said.
Alexander explained that the project recommendations were broken down into six different categories – Public Realm, Private Realm, Revenue and Sales, Administrative Capacity, Tenant Mix and Cultural and Arts.
One of the project ideas under the Public Realm was to help identify the programming and space needs for Northampton’s Resilience Hub.
“Under the Safety and Resources theme underneath Public Realm would be the enacting of a communications campaign to promote community resources available to vulnerable populations, an effort to identify programming and space needs for a fully constructed Resilience Hub and an expanded operations program to support the daily maintenance of public spaces,” Alexander said.
Under the Tenant Mix section, Alexander said two of the focuses were inviting more diverse businesses into the city and supporting startups.
“The first project idea is an initiative to recruit additional businesses to downtown Northampton with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion. Second is the creation of a new ground force base dedicated to the training and housing of startup enterprises,” he said.
“We are looking for a good mix of projects, we are going to be looking at the low hanging fruit, easy to implement projects and also the longer-term projects that may be a little more difficult or costly. So, we are looking to find that right mix and not front load or back load them too much,” he said.
While the projects are not directly related, Northampton Planning and Sustainability Director Wayne Feiden said there would be some overlap between the Picture Main Street and Downtown Northampton Rapid Recovery projects.
“Picture Main Street is long-term, probably starting in 2025 and then being with us for the next 100 years. What we are talking about now are shorter term things and there is certainly some overlap especially with fixing the brick pavers downtown because we can do that in the next two years and we do not want to wait five years to do everything,” he said.
Alexander said the next step for the plan is to narrow down the work to about 12 projects and finalize their rubrics for each in July and August.
“Now through the end of June we will be finalizing our list of project recommendations, that will allow us to begin the development of our project rubrics and begin to engage subject matter experts for those rubrics. That will comprise one of several components of our plan that we look forward to completing by the beginning of September,” he said.