 Good evening and welcome back to Byline. This is a public affairs show here at Amherst Media with the assistance of the Amherst League of Women Voters. We have a very special guest with us this evening, new to town, but boy is she making her presence felt. Gabrielle Gould is the executive director of the bid. What is a bid? It's a business improvement district. What is a business improvement district? So, the short answer is that it's our job to make sure that our downtown is thriving. Our businesses are marketed properly and we work with them to create programming and other things that drive our locals and visitors to come into Amherst and support local businesses. Terrific. And this is not a brand new organization. This has been around for a few years. I believe we are six years old. Six years old, but you're brand new here. I am brand new. And you've been here for a year. A year, a little over a year. And what brought you here? So we knew that our kids were not going to go to high school where we moved from. We started looking two summers ago and trying to figure out where we wanted to be. Looked from California to New York to the Carolinas. And my husband attended school here in Amherst and UMass. Really felt a connection to the location. High school is phenomenal. I think education is really what drove this as our vote. Education brought you to town. It did. It did. And a few months later you find yourself at the bid. And now you are ripping and roaring because there's a lot of creativity going on over at the bid. And you know this show is really, was created last year to help make the connection between the people and our newly formed government. So we're going to want to touch on how the bid and our town government interacts. But first let's do a little bit more background on this. So the bid is a membership organization. Businesses join it. No. It's a stakeholder organization. So the land owners, the property owners are the joiners. So the people inside of those properties are not the members. It's the landlords and the property owners. Yes. But we look at it as the, although the landlords are our members so to speak. We look at our clients as the businesses. Okay. So you're here to try to help those businesses thrive. Exactly. And also in time hopefully to start bringing new businesses into downtown. So we will start going out and doing economic development on another level for our land owners. Okay. So downtown, when we think about downtown, we think about the Jones Library and we think about City Hall and the police station, Amherst Cinema. Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson. But what about the commercial area in South Amherst and what about North Square which is coming on strong? That's two other commercial districts in our town. What's up with this? How do they relate to this? Well I think everything in Amherst and our surrounding communities relates. You know there's the age old saying that rising tides raise all and we say shops instead of ships. So what we want is success all across the board. We want density all across the board. We want people to want to live in Amherst, right? This is a great community. It's a beautiful place to be. How do we entice people, first-time professionals, young families, maybe people downsizing and retiring, maybe people just ready to get out of the city. How do we say that Amherst is where they want to be? Sharon Sherry from the Jones Library said the other day that Amherst has everything but the ocean. And I thought that that was such a great way to sum up and simply tell people who we are. We have everything but the ocean. So North Amherst incredible what Cinda is doing over there. Really love it. You know it's coming online as you said really fast. And then you've got the entire East Amherst village and everything going on there. We all love going down there for dinner at Mission Cantina. But a bid is really a specific district. So although our office focuses on that, we work hand in hand with the chamber. We work very closely with the chamber to not only bring other businesses into downtown for events and things like that, but it's cross promotion. And why not? Because if we could convince someone to spend four nights at the boltwood, you wouldn't say just stay in Amherst, right? Or even in the business district, you'd say make sure you go here. Make sure you take these hikes, Mount Tom, you know, all these amazing things that are around us that complete us. We're not directly on the river and yet we benefit from the river and we want people to explore the river. So I think that there's a really big symbiosis. You're focused on the downtown because that's your core constituency. But this is also about economic development for the whole community. The entire community. And so while the programs aren't necessarily happening in the other commercial districts, you see it as one economic pool here, which is the town of Amherst. And you know, tons of people stop at Atkins for whatever direction they're coming from. You make the trip to Atkins. You make the turn and you get there. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. And so about a six-year-old organization and you're the second director or third? I believe I'm the third. There was a very brief first director for about a year and then Sarah Lacour took on the bid for, I believe, five years and did an amazing job, gave an incredible foundation for someone like me to come in. And she and I have sat down and spoken a couple of times and our skill sets are very, very different and very complementary. So I feel like she set us up for an incredible. She created a big foundation. She did. A solid foundation. Absolutely. On which to build the next generation of work. And set us up for success for the next five years. That's great. And so you've only been in the job five months. So what have you seen? What have you observed? What sort of driving your thinking about the work and the plans for the bid? So we're concerned about downtown. On a national scale, we see small towns dying all over. And whether that is because we all can sit there and click Amazon and have something delivered to our home in some places within two hours, let alone 24 hours. Whether it's the big box, you know, is Walmart more appealing to the American public than a small shop that has your bath goods and things like that. So there is concern about any small businesses across the nation and really across the world. I was at an international conference for this, for bids across the world. And you're hearing it all over the place. So there is concern about downtown. But from our standpoint is what does it need? It needs more arts and culture. And that is going to be a really big driving force behind the bid. And we have created a new foundation. And it's called the Downtown Amherst Foundation. It's almost got all the appropriate stamps. We're great with the state. We're waiting for IRS. We know we've done it right. We're working on forming a board for that. We want a really diverse board of time, treasure and talent. Yes, we do want some bid members on that board, but it is not a bid board. It is a much bigger institute sort of thing. And our hopes and goals and what we presented to the town council a couple of weeks ago in a five-part presentation called Destination Amherst is bringing back the performing art shell. There was a band shell contest, things like that. So we're looking at a little bit differently. Bring back the band shell. I've lived in town since 1967. I don't ever remember seeing that shell. Because it never happens. The history of it is that all of these organizations in 91 the Rotary came to the town and said we're going to build you and donate a band shell. And they lost the vote by, I think, two votes at town meeting. So it's been narrowly defeated. So we are coming back online. So it's been an idea that's been in the pipeline for a long time. This individual's organizations have moved it to the front of debate. And each time it's just not taken off. So we're back. And we're back with a lot of hope because we have a new government. And where would it be? We have a town council. South Common. South Common. And if you look at the original drawings done by Frederick Olmsted who designed Central Park is probably his best known, you know, green space. He has a beautiful drawing of all of downtown Amherst and our beautiful three green spaces. And there is right in his drawing a performing art shell on the South Common. Terrific. So three green spaces. So we have the South Common. We must have then the North Common. And where's the third? So we have Sweets or Park. Sweets or Park. But also now we have Kendrick Park, which probably wasn't part of Olmsted's plan because that was all houses. It was all houses. So now we have four green spaces. But even as part of our destination Amherst, there's a lot of conversation about turning the North Common, which now has a park, you know, where the merry maple is, and a parking lot. It was never meant to be a parking lot. That was a green space. It had a frog pond on it, you know, all this other, you know, life was happening there. Can we return to that? Or something of that nature. Or something of that nature. Exactly. So does that mean taking that parking away? I believe right now what the town council is looking at is removing about half of that parking. So leave some, take some, which means we're going to have to replace that parking. So talk to me about parking from the bid's perspective. So it's the number one thing every business wants to talk about. It's the number one thing I hear when I say downtown Amherst, oh, I don't go there. I can't find parking. So the perception issue is very strong. The town has hired Nelson Nygaard on two separate occasions. They come back and tell us that we don't have a problem. We disagree. I'm sure they're quite lovely people, but we live here and we see what it is. When was the last one done? Three months ago? Oh my God, that recently? That recently? And they still said we don't have a problem. Well, you know, Fridays and Saturdays for a period of time were at that 88 to 90 percent capacity. Well, more people are taking the bus. More people are using their bicycles. I think to some extent, but you've seen the weather today. We're having a horrific day here. I don't think anybody's taking the bus today if they have a car. Yeah, well, that's true. I certainly didn't walk there. But I will say that more people are moving to electric vehicles. So whereas I won't say that we are going to see the end of the car in downtown Amherst any time in the near future, because all of a sudden everyone's going to leave their pod at home and jump on a bike or jump on the bus. I do think we're going to see a lot more electric vehicles. And I think that that is probably ecologically the more realistic place to walk. But so one of the pieces of this five-part destination in Amherst is a parking garage and asking the town if they would be interested in rezoning the back town lot of the CVS area. So it's not the CVS lot. It is a town-owned lot and doing an RFP for that for a public-private partnership. And public-private partnership, what does that mean to people who don't know what a public-private partnership is? So it means that the town would sign a very kind lease with some entity, a private entity who would then build, maintain, and manage the garage at no cost to the taxpayer. There's several huge capital projects that are in front of our council right now. A lot of millions of dollars are on the table, overrides. What does that look like? How do these things get funded? This, the parking garage and the performing art shell are literally zero to the town. So the performing art shell that we're looking at the foundation would like to build the hope is that we'll build that and then we'll donate it to the town. And you'll donate to the town, but who's going to maintain and operate that for the future? So our capital campaign is a three-part capital campaign. It's the design and build money. It's a maintenance and endowment fund and it's a programming fund. So our hope is to assist in programming this, to work with all the other entities that want to use the common and use the stage from local ballet to local musicians, the high school, the town itself. We just had Black History Month. It was out on the woodchips. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if they had an actual stage with an actual sound system? But the foundation wants to help program it to show what is possible. So we're looking at raising enough money to program it for at least two years, show what's possible, work with Shakespeare and Company, work with Palabalist Dance Company, work with all these entities. While working with our community and our local arts performing and even media arts, like why not? We could have films being screened on. You used to have films on the common in the summer. I think those should come back. Very good. So you'll build it. You'll start operating it. You're going to give it to the town. Government has a lot of problems with maintaining facilities. Even those that are gifted. Even those that are gifted. After all, the Jones Library was a gift of a family in the 1912s. But here we are 100 years later. And we are now talking about, for the second time at public expense, to restore, renovate, rejuvenate the physical facility itself. Bring it up to a 21st century library. There you go. So yeah, and I heard this morning 250,000 people a year go through that library. And then not all Amherst residents, but that means people are driving into town when they're here. What are they doing? They go to the library. Maybe they stop off for lunch. Maybe they do whatever they do. Maybe they go to the Amherst Cinema. But basically people are being brought into the town as a result of things like the library and Amherst Cinema. But let's go back to the shell. How is that shell going to be maintained 20 and 30 years from now? So again, the capital campaign will do a part of it. It will be an endowment and maintenance fund. And there are details to figure out if we are going to proceed with this with the town. Who holds the maintenance fund? Where does that work? And those are details that will be discussed at length with the council, with the town manager, definitely with DBW. So a sufficient gift will be going to the town along with the shell to ensure that it can be preserved into the future and doesn't become a rundown shambles and that it basically is something the town can sustain and add to the vibrancy of the downtown. Okay, so we've talked to Garage and we've talked about a band shell or performing our shell. What else is in the plan? And this is the plan you gave to the town council? Yes, this is a five-part plan. It's a five-part plan, so we've got two. We've got 12 minutes to go, we've got three to go. So we are also looking at open containers on the common for alcohol, beer, craft beers, wines, ciders. Every town around us is doing it. Hadley is having a beautiful beer garden on Fridays in the summer. The Asparagus Festival, you go over to Northampton, they've got their thing, Belger Town. So why is it that we can't have that? And the taste has been an anchor for Amherst for a long time, but the beer has always been over on Amherst College. Well, Amherst College will no longer host the beer. So the taste, everything that we're doing is hanging in the balance. So this is a policy regulatory thing. It isn't about money. This is a quick by-law change and I believe Monday, the 10th, it is going up in front of the council to be changed. The Licensing Commission, Doug Slaughter, is the chair of that. The 10th of February or March, February. Right, right, literally. Right around the corner. 72 hours ahead of us. And that really is a game changer for us, because that means that not only the bid, the chamber, and other organizations can start to utilize that common in a bigger way. Our music nights can have a couple of different craft brewers there. Beer and wine only? I would say beer, wine, cider. No spirits. You know, I don't know. Okay, I mean that's a big difference between beer and wine. But we do have local distillers and wouldn't it be neat to have a distiller there. But I think that's up to the Licensing Commission. That's not up to us. They will give us regulations. And we will adhere to those. And so those would be one-off licenses at a time. Exactly. It's not a permanent thing. You're not putting up a bunch of things that are going to stand on the common year-round. Everything's temporary. You go get your permit and license for the event. You pay your fee. You do the thing. You add the fun and blah, blah, blah. Okay, so that's three. Now what's number four? We've got public art initiatives coming. We're working on something called Footprints of Downtown Amherst. This is a concept of when you're at the Jones, if you ever look at sort of the sidewalk outside, way back the bid hosted a sidewalk art chalk week. And one of them has stayed. And it was a mistake. It was supposed to be very temporary and it was a mistake and it stayed. And it's beautiful. And I've had a friend of mine said that her daughter loves to go to the library because she wants to go and look at that tile before she goes to the library. So one of the things when I came on board was, do we need an app? Do we need an app that you can walk around Amherst and it tells you where to go and it shows you where things are. And it's, you know, this way to Dickinson. And then I thought we're all walking. So it's a where to go app. It's sort of, yeah, a where to go app. But we're all already walking around glued to these things. So we kind of took that away and said, well, what could we do that wasn't that? And how do we show that we're a walkable community, which we are. So we came up with this idea of footprints of Downtown Amherst. So starting at the top of the corner of Maine and Pleasant, Emily Dickinson's footprints are going to walk down on the sidewalk to her house with a poem. So you'll have something to look at and read and sort of follow down to her. Sammy the owl is going to be, we're going to paint a beautiful Sammy himself. And then we're going to have his footprints hopping to the Jones at the other side coming up. So if you're coming up south to, I mean, north to South Pleasant and heading up 116, we have a gorgeous big spotted salamander who is going to footprint alongside the very hungry caterpillar who's going to eat his way. They need the town council's permission to do this. I think right now we're working with Paul because it's a semi-permanent installation, but we are presented in the town council as well. Okay. So one project is performing arts on the common and the other is visual arts on our sidewalks and written poetry, etc, etc, which is also going to be like a tourism attraction type of thing and help people in town long enough that they're going to need to buy a meal and they might even decide to stay over at the Jeff. Yes. And Amherst College is going to have mammoth footprints. Amherst College is going to have mammoth footprints coming into town. UMass will have his Minuteman footprints coming up. And then we want to do some Nash dinosaurs and things in between. Okay. That's number four. Number five. Oh boy. Well, we've got a lot of other public art commission things going. Another concept that we are looking at and we've met with the public art commission on and we're just waiting for approval from a couple of other places. The DRB, really design review board, is we want to do a paint by number mural festival. So one day festival where we will create this really stunning mural to go up on a big brick wall. And during the day we're going to have from two year olds to 99 year olds be able to come pick a number and a color. If you're a hundred, stay home. Stay home. A hundred and two. Maybe two to a hundred and two. But then we're going to put a plaque up and name all the people in the community who helped paint this mural. And of course we are going to have the artist come and finesse it to make sure it's powerful. How long will the mural be up? Well, it's a mural. So hopefully. So it'll be permanent. So over the years then we'll be building up a collection of murals which will fit into the public art picture of the town. And how about maintaining those? We had this thing, you know, near the West Street cemetery where Emily Dickinson is buried. It was a redevelopment project which was going to require a mural be removed. And they found a scenario to be able to ensure that the mural would be maintained. Of course they had to redo it. So we actually held sort of a ribbon cutting ceremony for that mural when the artist was finished. It was fantastic. We did hot cider and donuts out there. Chilly, chilly day because of course he finished in late fall. But beautifully attended. We're able to walk up and down the mural and talk about all the pieces of history that were recreated. It does have three or four coats of a very heavy varnish that of course helps it maintain. But like any piece of art, especially an outdoor piece of public art, there will have to be maintenance. And the foundation will make sure that things like this are maintained. So there's going to be some piece of endowment or something to maintain the public art installations because I've been very excited about some of the public art that's gone up in town over the years. But there are a few pieces that have really gotten very tired shall we say and have pretty much gone away. For example, there was a poetry piece, a visual video type of thing. And I haven't seen that working for years. So there's this thing. The garage at Bouldwood. Okay. Into the garage at Bouldwood. The garage at Bouldwood. We're not really trying not to recreate that whole scenario or fiasco. So yeah. I was very much a part of that. I got the money for it. It ended up being the most expensive garage in the history of humankind on a per space basis because there was opposition to building up. And so we ended up only having down. Right. And so piece of ancient history. We know it's a hot topic. We can let it go. Let's hope it'll go better the second time. How many stories, by the way, is the garage? It depends who applies to the RFP and what it looks like. Our intention is to apply to the RFP. And what we have very roughly sketched out is a two-story, three-level garage. So one down, two up. Fits. Actually one down, one level, and one up. Exactly. So it fits about 200 cars, but it remains within the tree line and the preexisting building line. So you don't see it. And I think that this town wants to keep a certain aesthetic. And if I came in and said, what about a five-story garage? I would be, you know, a pariah. So we're going to keep with tree line, building line, you know. So each and every one of these projects that you've described, the five pieces, requires the town's involvement and town boards, including the town council, design, planning. Historic. Historic. All these boards have a role in reviewing your ideas, your vision and helping to shape them and tell you you're going too far here or you need to trim this or did you think about that? Right. And so there's going to be a really significant role for the town government. And so this will be the first thing of this kind that the town council, our new government, and especially our town council, is going to be facing because it's all new. Yeah. And we're coming to them with a lot. Yes. All at once. All at once. So big visions, big ideas. Well, I think if you look at it too, why we decided to put the five parts together is because they really do. If you had a puzzle, these are the five puzzle pieces that can change the dynamic. But if you brought just the performing art shell, well, the question is, where's the parking? If you bring just the redoing of the North Common, the question is, where's the parking? If you're just doing the parking, Nelson Nygaard says we don't really need it. Why are we even looking at that? But when you look at the greater scope of really creating an arts and cultural center in downtown, well, it all sort of fits together. The Kendrick Park playground. Where are those parking spaces? Things like that. So looking at it as a five part piece really ties it all together. And I don't think there was a better way to do it. And I think if you had gone in piecemeal, it wouldn't have made sense. So it's a vision. It is. And how long is it going to take to build this vision out assuming that everything is sort of going along as it should? So I came in and said, I know I can raise a million dollars. I know I can do this. Let's have a performing art shell by fall of 2020. And I was met with, you know, lots of. Like, yeah. Yeah. Welcome to Amherst. So it's going to take a while. But she doesn't know the town. I don't. But she doesn't know the territory. I don't. So apparently a lot longer than I had envisioned. Had envisioned. But it doesn't mean that we can't do it. But there is excitement building around this vision. Yep. I think so. And yeah. And so by the way, so people in town will be able to contribute to this foundation if they if they like this vision. And as will the businesses in town. And it'll be a way of bringing. We say town and gown, meaning the colleges and universities together with the town. This is a way of bringing the business community together with the town's folk to achieve a vision for a next generation vibrancy of the downtown. And that's that's your vision. And we've spoken with both the college and the university and the amount of programming that they would love to bring into town on this. So, you know, wouldn't it be great if, you know, Berthuen and Eisenberg could host some of their pitch nights outside in the fresh air on the stage. So it's got a lot of potential. Good. And so in the final minute, do you have any other thoughts you want to put on the table and and share with us? I think we've got great vision. I think there's huge potential and energy, you know, this town council as their feet are now underneath them. You know, it's been a year. They've got a couple of years left before everybody's going into reelection mode or I'm not being reelected or I don't want to. I know that Claudia at the chamber has an incredible amount of energy and excitement. I think we're mirroring that and that there's a lot of symbiosis happening right now with Jeff Kravitz leaving economic development. I've seen Paul and the town look at this so seriously and they know how important that role is. So I think we're going to find a super person to come in there and it's a really nice trifecta right now. And although I know Amherst is not want to change, it might actually have the impotence to change. And speaking of change, change is coming and you can be involved in it. So thank you for being with us today and sharing this vision and all the excitement at our downtown and with our bid under your leadership. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you all for being here. We'll see you again soon.