Sidewalk Renovations | Membership | Map | Newsletter
 State Street Area Art Fair | Links | Contacts | Home

 
State Street Area Sidewalk Renovations

Bonnie Bona, President, SSAA

Bonnie Bona -- president of the State Street Area Association and long-time manager of the late and lamented Chris Triola shop -- was trained and started her professional life as an architect. When the State Street Area Pedestrian Improvement Project was begun, Bonnie was the ideal person to have oversee the project from the Association’s point of view. After all, she understood the project as a merchant and as an architect and could thus see both sides of the issues at stake.

Two months into the project, Bonnie is very pleased with the results. "Just cleaning up the sidewalk is such a dramatic change! Even without the trees and the lights, the new surfaces really make a difference. The photographs from the study showed all the different surfaces on State and Liberty and Maynard and the new surfaces are really pulling the neighborhood together visually."

Bonnie is equally enthusiastic about Project Manager Adrian Iraola. "Adrian’s doing fantastic work. He admits that he can’t prevent every difficulty or solve every problem but he’ll be there to work through the problem." For example, when Ashley’s sidewalk was blocked so that trash haulers couldn’t reach the garbage dumpsters in their alley, -- dumpsters which were filled with the shells of lobsters from Ashley’s lobster fest warming in the hot June sun -- Adrian grabbed a front loader and took the dumpsters out of the alley personally.

While Bonnie allows that many "of the businesses are down year to year but I’m not sure it’s the renovations. It may be the calming of the economy after the boom of the last decade is part of the reason. But this is an entertainment neighborhood and I think that when the lights go in, it’s going to make a huge difference to the people who come to the area. I think that when they see how clean and well-lighted the area is, they’ll want to stay longer and come back more often."

Nor does Bonnie see the completion of the project next year as signaling the end of the improvements to the area. "Tom (Heywood, Executive Director of the SSAA) and I have been talking and we’ve identified some things that we’d like to encourage in the neighborhood. The investment made by the DDA (The Downtown Development Authority) was meant to be a catalyst to encourage the business and property owners to continue making physical improvements for their businesses that will also benefit the collective neighborhood. We’ve engaged a cleanup crew to maintain the sidewalks and alleys. And we’re also talking about ways to make the businesses more visible, to clean up the window displays so that strollers can see into the business and to add more windows to other businesses."

Although Bona’s Chris Triola shop closed its door in June after eight and a half years, she plainly still cares passionately about the neighborhood and has agreed to stay on as president of the SSAA through the completion of the renovations.  

By James Leonard