Tell others about the Lawn Signs and talk to your neighbors and friends about signing the petition. Go to www.westfieldadvocates.org to request a lawn sign and sign the petition.
The Valentine's Day town council meeting was disappointing in that the Mayor and Town Council voted to approve the Lord and Taylor/Train Station Redevelopment Plan, 7-1. We knew they would, it was in the bag!
Our advocacy efforts are not finished - our efforts are to make sure all residents know of this development's scope, scale, and size and the multiple impacts on the quality of our lives. We are more than the vocal minority!
We all would like a smaller scale project-less height and less apartments/acre. We'd like townhouses that are the same height as residential single family homes and we question the necessity of having townhouse roof access and 'string lights' until 11pm in the evening when families have settled in for the night.
The next round of this project are the financials and this is where it affects your pocketbooks. Research the financial deal, the cash flows, the revenues and PILOT payments, and ask questions about school taxes --focus on the short term - between now and 10 years. The construction schedule is critical because if the developer doesn't meet his dates and he doesn't control capital costs (particularly with the inefficient garages), there is potentially an impact on currently forecasted revenues and allocation of those revenues to certain activities. And lets not forget the questionable value they have determined for selling the public land to a sole source, with no public bids.
Lawn signs and Petition Signers - we've been at this for a few months, they've been at this for 3-4 years-- encourage others to CHIRP and SING!