In another thread, I was asked for ways that I thought the state could help Springfield. It is difficult to describe Springfield’s problems succinctly. I can only offer my middle-class white perspective, but there are many other residents’ viewpoints which need to be considered. We are a very diverse city.
From my perspective, Springfield is struggling with poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of services/amenities, lack of recreational options, lack of economic diversity, and a recent particularly nasty reputation for crime (partially deserved, partially undeserved – it wasn’t right for Chris Gabrielli to call us “Detroit” a few years back).
As a city resident, I live here because I don’t want to live in an enclave where everyone is just like me. I want to live in an ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood. That diversity is slipping away as the city becomes more and more poor, and more and more ethnically/racially segregated from the region. I would like to see the city retain a more balanced populace, especially economically.
I would like to be proud of my city, to be able to advise people to move here. I would like to be able to drive to retail stores and restaurants in my neighborhood instead of having to leave the city to go to a bookstore (Springfield has zero firsthand bookstores). I would like to not have to worry that a state sponsored home for sex offenders or drug addicts is going to move next door to me (this happens more than you’d believe).
I would like to not have to explain away the city’s reputation on a daily basis. I would not like to have to worry when I see a “for sale” sign go up on my block, and to have to explain to everyone else that this person is not fleeing, but is moving for their job or something else innocent. I would like to not be constantly told that I should move by my friends.
It is not possible to solve all these problems at once, but we can do some things immediately, short-term, medium-term, and long-term to make Springfield a better place, to make it the engine of the region again.
More below..
Immediate Help
First, people need to stop treating Springfield like a Republican treats a welfare recipient. Even when we discuss Springfield here – a liberal blog – the discussion usually starts out with reasons why Springfield doesn’t deserve help. It’s like reading a Fox message board that bashes poor people for their lack of “personal responsibility”.
Yes, there was corruption in the city 15 years ago, primarily involving quasi-municipal entities such as homeless shelters and housing authorities. Yes, the city got into budgetary trouble (after Romney cut local aid 20%) and had a Control Board for over 5 years. Yes, the city gets more state aid than other cities and towns in the state, primarily going to the schools. Those are symptoms, not causes.
We are average people – and economically, below average. Of course our city government isn’t made up of rocket scientists and brain surgeons – those people fled to the suburbs years ago. We shouldn’t have to govern exceptionally to deserve the help of which we need. This should be a crucial liberal tenet.
Even when the state tries to get involved to help, it treats the city like a welfare queen. It put a daddy-state control board on top of us for half a decade before it would help us financially (I might note that no such proposal was made for the recent help given to North Adams, though I will note that we have a Democratic governor instead of a Republican governor, which helps. However I will also note that the reason for that city’s financial trouble – the closing of the state hospital – makes little sense, since the hospital is a non-profit and therefore doesn’t contribute to the city’s budget).
People always point to assets we have, and say that we should sell them before getting help; for example, our parks, our libraries, or our water system – a local state legislator actually made those suggestions. Local state legislators have even complained because we were receiving state aid despite having a small rainy-day fund (amounting to 5% of our annual budget). We are treated like a Republican treats a welfare recipient who has a TV set and a small bank account and who occasionally buys a bottle of soda.
Instead of chiding us for the past or complaining that we have to be helped at all, give us good, positive suggestions that are both fair and are designed to actually help us, not punish us. I can assure you that the 150,000 residents of Springfield are not colluding to fleece the rest of the state.
But also realize that like a welfare recipient, we will never be successful by having only our most pressing needs barely met, and that even once we get all the help we need, this success will not come quickly. Our city government is as bare-boned as it can be; we have the highest amount of in-need citizens as we have ever had. Instead of giving us some short-term cash, we need long-term partnership plus education and guidance (but not stringent requirements) in how to use any aid in the best ways.
Short-term Help
The largest pressing problem I see is Springfield’s current reputation for crime. The city certainly deserves some of the reputation – we do have murders and shootings here, although they are mostly the result of drug deals or gang violence. However we are a small news market, and for a wide variety of reasons the crime tends to get overemphasized. Crime is actually lower now than it was 10 years ago, but if you ask anyone they will tell you they are much more afraid now. I believe that the fear is driven by a higher prevalence of poor nonwhite people in the city – how else can someone “see” a likelihood of crime without seeing crimes taking place?
The experience that “johntmay” wrote of is typical. I doubt that he saw actual crime, he most likely saw poverty and therefore felt unsafe. However I have not heard of a visitor to the city’s downtown ever being victimized, that is mostly just the perception. There are still a few nice small restaurants within safe walking distance of the Sheraton, but the employee he ran into put the fear into him – that is also part of the perception problem, the suburban residents are scared to death of the city and make sure that they warn everyone about it every chance they can. That fear often turns into pure unadulterated hatred for Springfield, and this vitriol has permeated everything and everyone. It is a major drag on the city.
How can we immediately address that? Well, Springfield hired almost 200 police officers in the late 1990’s with the aid of the federal COPS (Community policing) program. Unfortunately, this was a 5-year grant, and the city couldn’t support the additional employees once the money ran out. That would be a great start, the publicity of hiring 200 cops coupled with the more visible community presence would go a long way. We would need a long-term commitment for them though, perhaps as long as 20 years. The layoffs after just 5 years were horrific for the city’s reputation, primarily because the cops used it to start publicly bashing the city.
Another short-term solution is to quickly address poverty with a substantial inner-city jobs program. Sure, these will be largely make-work jobs, but they take kids off the streets and give them something to do. They introduce them to the working world – something that wealthier kids get with jobs via family friends and relatives.
We could use help to improve the optics of our city too. Little things, like graffiti cleanup money, facade improvement programs, money to rehabilitate buildings is desperately needed. Most of our real estate is underwater because the cost of rehab is often more than the value of the building. When you drive through a neighborhood that is boarded up, you’re not going to feel good about being there.
CDBG money has been cut dramatically over the past 20 years. This is money that used to help with such things. That is something our federal representatives should be working on.
Our streets are shabby too. This is a cue to outsiders that we are a poor place that should be avoided. Infrastructure improvements would go a long way.
Medium-term Help
We should look at various state policies that uniquely impact the city. One that comes to mind, one that a friend experienced is the requirement to add sprinklers to buildings which undergo a certain amount of renovation. This causes people to simply not put money into their buildings because it could trigger a large expense. While sprinklers are a worthwhile goal, the impact of this law is disproportionately affecting Springfield; there is incentive to not improve your property.
We need help developing an economic purpose for Springfield (and other Gateway cities) within the state. We used to be the hub of both commerce and manufacturing in the region. We lost the commerce when the highways came and made suburban living easier – the stores and shops followed the people. We lost the manufacturing over the past 20 years as NAFTA and China hit us hard.
We have coped to a small degree by focusing on colleges and hospitals, but there has been no state recognition that although these places provide jobs (though the higher-paying jobs go mainly to suburban residents), they do not provide the city with any tax revenue since they are non-profits. This has contributed to our Proposition 2.5 levy ceiling – as more and more properties are converted to non-profit, the tax levy is spread across fewer and fewer people.
With the demise of lower-tech manufacturing, what else is there for our average citizens? What opportunities are there for a living wage for someone who doesn’t get a college education? I say that we need a purpose because suburbs and rural communities already have such a purpose, an identity. Ours should not be “that’s where the poor people live” – yet that is how we are seen.
On that note, we should address Proposition 2.5 impacts. Springfield’s property taxes aren’t high to a suburban resident – the average tax bill is somewhere near $2,500. However they are high to the large number of people living here below the poverty line. The lower property taxes are not attractive to anyone looking to buy a house.
It must be nice to have room to grow your tax levy in times of need. We don’t know that luxury – we had to shrink our budget in times of need because of the levy ceiling. I think that it is time to do a serious analysis on property taxes in this state in relation to constraints put on larger cities. We may want to investigate allowing for other ways for local revenue to be raised (maybe by diverting a penny of the sales tax to the community that collects it).
Legalizing drugs would go a long way to cure violence, I think. But we need to go beyond that. We need to take drug convictions off our residents’ records. Turn them into the equivalent of speeding violations. Many people cannot get jobs because of their past arrest records. How can someone start over if they cannot get a job?
We could also use more money for treatment of people with addictions. The entire region is grappling with heroin addiction; it’s nice to see attention finally being paid to this, but we have had these problems in Springfield for decades.
Mental health is another big issue. There are a lot of mentally ill people out there. Closing the hospitals did not make them go away, it just put them onto the city streets. Of course a mentally ill person can’t buy a house in Natick. He winds up in the poorest community out there, and often in a homeless shelter in said community. We have to figure out how to get these people help, and if they can’t be helped, then to at least distribute their burden more evenly.
Raising the minimum wage would help a lot. If the only jobs for non-college people are now service jobs, then we need to get those service jobs up to a livable wage.
Long-term Help
The biggest impetus against middle class families being in Springfield is the school system. I know it isn’t going to be easy, but we have to address this. The major problem is that the state’s schools are wildly segregated. No middle-class parent wants to be a pioneer and send their kids to a school with an 90% poverty rate, a school that has a racial/ethnic balance that is wildly out of the norms of the region (the Brightwood school in Springfield has four white students in it out of 358). Instead of faulting the region, the federal government faults Springfield, and complains that we’re segregating our schools, and they demand an action plan. They try to make us shuffle students within the city, which just causes people to get fed up and leave if they have the resources to do so. They ignore the schools in surrounding communities that are 95% white.
I know that busing isn’t the answer – it didn’t work and was very divisive. We have to go in the other direction; instead of forcing people into a school, let’s entice them. Give poorer district schools the best programs, the best teachers, the best equipment. We’re doing the exact opposite of that right now. Most wealthy districts have the most experienced and highest paid teachers, the best equipment, and the newest buildings.
We also have to abandon the upper-middle-class notion that every child should go to college; that our schools should only work to prepare every single child for a college education. This is a big addition to Springfield’s image problems; the focus on rating our schools has driven many smaller communities to enact policies to make their schools hyper-competitive. This causes them to do things like guide housing development to only attract high-end professionals, and to exclude housing for poor people who might make their schools bad.
Making simplistic dumbed-down ratings available and prevalent further hurts communities like Springfield. Labeling a school a one-dimensional “failure” accomplishes nothing except to make people avoid that school. Do you think that Springfield wants failing schools? Do you think that the teachers there want this label? We bring in consultants, we bring in management companies to take over these “failing” schools, but nothing works, the management companies get paid and nothing changes.
The dirty little secret that everyone knows but no one speaks is that the failure usually isn’t of the school – it is of the school’s population. That is why so many communities work so hard to keep that population out, and the result is that this population concentrates in cities, which were built before exclusive zoning laws were even dreamed of.
We need schools that can offer basic educations and train students for other careers. While it might be wonderful if every student had the precise set of skills so they could choose college someday, if this policy is causing kids to fail, why do we continue to pursue it? Do all of the people in our workforce truly require advanced mathematics in their future careers? Or is this a “nice to have” feature?
We also need job training that isn’t tied to community colleges. Again, college is not the magic bullet. We should be training people to be plumbers, landscapers, and any other living-wage job that can be done by someone without high skills.
Reforming welfare so that it isn’t so punitive and so that it isn’t designed to only go to women is another long-term possibility. Men typically can’t get welfare, and their presence in a family typically disqualifies a woman from getting it (because the belief is that men are simply lazy if they aren’t working). This has immense social issues – poor men are devalued in poor communities because they can bring nothing to the table, their presence can actually make things worse for a woman.
Conclusion
Do I expect this all to happen? Of course not. But we need to start the discussion, especially here. Take a drive someday, and see what is happening in the less fortunate areas of this state. Boston is doing pretty well. Springfield (and to a large extent Western Mass) is far behind.
I would love to hear other comments on this situation – constructive, not chiding. We have some of the finest liberal thinkers in the state on this very forum, let’s work together to figure this out.
That’s why Detroit sank and Pittsburg did not.
It’s the major reason why Lowell is so much better than Lawrence.
So the state should uproot UMass-Amherst and move it to Springfield.
in Springfield, but the idea of moving UMass-Amherst is frankly ludicrous. Why don’t we move Boston to Western Mass? I can’t tell if you’re joking, and I know you’re not stupid.
Cities have to have a purpose. For example Boston was saved in the 60’s because 128 high tech needed bankers lawyers and accountants and it was useful to gather them together. Obviously having a chunk of colleges and hospitals added to that. Cities used to have manufacturing because you needed to be close to workers. No longer necessary. Successful cities have evolved. Others have not. The problems are huge. Lawrence for example can only fund the city but not the schools. The gap is impossible to make up. The tax base is hampered not only by the same lack of business issues, but the huge footprint of entities that don’t pay taxes like nonprofits. You can fix these issues Detroit is down 60% in people because there’s no reason for that many people to live there. We could each write a book on solutions and still not have a viable answer.
Exactly right.
Cities will have jobs if they have some kind of business cluster: a reservoir of workers with common skill sets, interlocking businesses with supplier-customer relationships. To focus on “jobs” is perhaps to miss the idea that a thriving economy is not built singleton job by singleton job.
Geography and demographics are destiny. To some degree.
I’ve been thinking about my own town of Granby. There are some in town that believe that bringing in sewers will bring in business and improve our tax base. I’ve said it’s a math problem. One million dollars in property will bring in $17,000. We couldn’t bring in $10 million in property in a million years. There is also more in neighboring towns, including Route 9 in Hadley, which is starting to look like Route 9 closer to Boston.
Infrastructure won’t solve our problem, but it could help Springfield. High speed rail would bring connect the city to other parts of New England and the state.
Geography in terms of municipalities is the root of the problem. As No Politician frequently opines, we are a segregated society. Most suburbs can’t take refugees, we don’t have the housing. Poor people can’t afford to live in our communities, which have limited affordable housing. Their children are largely segregated from our communities and our opportunities.
and can’t really be changed. Or if you do try to change them, at the end of the day nothing changes. I once lived in a town that was quiet and rural. There was a neighboring town with the same population that decided to become a retail mecca. Same population, the built up town needed 10x the number of town employees ( particularly cops) and the taxes for residents in both towns were pretty much the same. The retail ended up not helping them at all.
Pittsburgh didn’t just rely on Pitt and CMU. The hospitals played a major role, as did a number of non-profits. And, the Burgh is less than half of its population from 50 years ago. It’s gotten smaller, albeit more gracefully. It also didn’t suffer from local and state mismanagement over the course of a half century the way Detroit (and New Orleans) did.
As for moving UMass-Amherst? Nope. Maybe figure out a way to beef up Springfield College, Western New England University, American International College, and/or Springfield Technical Community College, all of which are in Springfield. STCC is the only public of the four, and has an enrollment of 9,000. Maybe beefing up STCC could be a big help to both Springfield and the Commonwealth. Figure out which trades we need more of, and train ’em — health care, criminal justice, engineering, business. Whatever. Springfield gains activity — demand for housing and services. The rest of the state gains skilled labor, and if coordinated well, perhaps even improved medical services statewide at lower cost.
Boosting STCC won’t save the day, just like graffiti cleanup won’t save the day. But, things like this, in concert with other programs, could help bring property values up, thereby driving more tax revenue to continue making improvements.
But some researchers have isolated it as one reason that Detroit seems to be worse than others. Look at Providence for example. It should be much worse but it has a lot of great stuff and people seem to like it. It seems to be related to all the colleges.
I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush or besmirch the programs that do exist, but what we need is a tighter bond between the colleges in the city and the city itself (government, community and population).
In some, but not all ways, the colleges act somewhat like bunkers, sealed off from the rest of the city except where a car can safely take you. I find it astounding that the plaza across from Western New England is not packed with amenities catering to students. Such retail need not be on a scale to displace the malls or other shopping areas, and what is there is good, but there could be way, way more there and near the other colleges. The city and the schools should be working together to make simple things like that happen in addition to the broader college-city integration.
We did not see any actual crime but the area did look like the TV show “COPS”. What I did see, sadly, was so many beautiful buildings, parks, and other old structures that were all in disrepair.
Here’s a thought: How about 55+ neighborhoods? Not all of us want to move to Florida and our current homes are getting too big and expensive for is headed into retirement.
However when my wife live there 10 years ago (near the corner of McGrath and O”Brien, between her and her roommate:
1. Parked car hit and run.
2. Parked car keyed
3. Parked car tires slashed
4. Scared by homeless person going through garbage cans (this seems to happen everywhere).
5. Twice while on their front stoop someone walking by offered to sell them drugs.
6. Well publicized rape 1 block away
7. Gangbangers walking past the house periodically.
These are the kinds of things you get in cities and they are not conducive to people (especially young women and families) moving in.
Easy answer … the Red Line.
I don’t think comparing Somerville to Springfield is going to help.
A more apt comparison may be Lowell, Lawrence, and New Bedford (although I know almost nothing about the latter), not to mention smaller north shore towns like Beverly, Peabody, Salem, and Gloucester.
In the case of Somerville (and of course only in certain sections) you deal with those because the many pluses (proximity to so much, for example) outweigh the challenges. The question is what positives do you get in all those other cities to make up for the negatives?
It sure didn’t hurt West Somerville, but it’s hard to see how it helped Winter Hill or Union Square.
The Red Line helped all of Somerville because it created a corrider of prosperity, from Porter Square to Davis Square, and extending outwards from there.
That prosperity brought a combination of dramatically increased property values (and therefore tax revenue) and changed expectations of government and city services from those who bought, lived in, and did business in those increasingly more valuable properties.
The change in attitude, towards and in city government and city services, helped Winter Hill and Union Square along with the rest of the city. It brought political leadership (like Mike Capuano) who saw and actively worked to realize a brighter vision for Somerville.
A rising tide really DOES lift all the boats — so long as it is spread relatively evenly among them.
I agree that a great short-term strategy would be trying to attract empty-nesters who are looking to downsize. That would have worked about 12 years ago, and people in the city were trying to make that happen.
But then 2003 happened. The first shoe to drop was the state budget cuts. Springfield had been on the financial brink prior to that, but when the city’s “additional assistance” was eliminated, along with a 20% cut in unrestricted local aid, that forced the city to lay off hundreds of employees, including 76 police officers.
How do I remember the number 76? Because the police union beat it into our heads. They actually ran radio commercials stating that the city was now more dangerous, and that they would not be responding to calls for burglaries and house alarms. They ran a Public Relations campaign against the city, telling everyone to be very afraid.
The second shoe dropped about six months later, when an internet-based publication called Morgan Quitno ranked the city as the 20th “most dangerous city” in the nation. The news media plastered that everywhere. The methodology was flawed because it was overwhelmingly based on domestic violence cases, and they used data in a way that the FBI said it shouldn’t be used, but that didn’t matter. Crime hadn’t even been an issue in that year’s mayoral race Once it was out, the damage was done. Every year since then, the local newspaper has either run the city’s “dangerousness” ranking (unless it wasn’t ranked, in which case it didn’t run any “safe” ranking) or has insanely focused on crime, with body counts in its articles, comparisons like “Springfield is on pace to record 20 murders this year” if, say, there had been 5 by the end of March.
Over-55 housing is also widely pursued by suburban communities because it satisfies their 40B requirements and doesn’t add any students to the schools. It’s an area in which Springfield can’t compete, particularly due to the lack of land for such a project.
I keed, I keed.
That was great, thanks.
Massachusetts needs to allocate more resources to eliminating poverty statewide. I wouldn’t mind paying more taxes to do it either, even if it went to another impoverished part of the state. I know it’s simplistic, but the most immediate thing that Springfield can do is get rid of the Graffiti! Make it an attractive place to live and visit. Looks good is good!” I notice that Springfield has made moves in this direction with the Graffiti Abatement and outreach.
The beginning of a community developing pride is ownership and responsibility for each other. For that to happen a community needs to develop empathy. Empathy is learned, kids, and the community, need to feel the impact that tagging has on their city, the damage paint vapor does to the artist, and the people who will be exposed to dangerous chemicals cleaning it up. It would be great if the Springfield courts could help out by providing ongoing “community service” credits to offenders (given proper respiratory protection of course ☺) who helped, alongside community volunteers, in the graffiti removal and city clean-up effort.
It’s not just graffiti. It’s pulling weeds from sidewalks, tree pits, and the like. It’s sweeping. It’s planting new street trees, and ensuring that they survive.
Rather than a punishment as jshore proposes, I’d prefer that it be an employment program. I don’t know how to work this in alongside union DPW employees. It’s a non-trivial thing. If it’s not done through government but rather through a private/non-profit effort it could work I suppose. The idea isn’t that somebody does this for a long time, but rather that the employee gains a reference so that he or she can apply to another job and be able to “prove” that he or she can be counted on to show up on time, work hard, learn new tasks, etc. Maybe some local Springfield businesses even end up trolling the organization when looking to hire full-timers for their businesses.
It ain’t going to solve everything, but it surely couldn’t hurt. It isn’t free though — is it the best use of funds? I don’t have any idea…
What you propose would be a welcome addition, and I thought about it when I was writing. In a community as poor as Springfield, I didn’t see creating jobs as a viable solution. This would have to be a volunteer effort because people are still angry and effected by the 76 police officers are out of work.
Funny, I didn’t think of it as punishment, sorry if it came across that way. In a community as poor as Springfield, it seemed to be productive way for offenders without money, jobs, or prospects to pay fines. I think taxpayer money would be better spent on financing a program like this, than paying to have a person sit in jail for a minor offence because they can’t pay a fine.
I was thinking employment. You were thinking about a productive alternative to jail or other non-productive punishment. Both are reasonable ideas. It might be that they work well side-by-side.
of a WPA for cities. Pay people to fix up their community.
I’ve been discussing this over and over on these forums, but appreciate your personal experience and data based commentary. When it looked like I was getting a job back here , I checked area housing and my fiancée found on the computer great places in Lawrence and Lynn bear commuter rail stations and asked how those communities were. I then had to break the bad news, but I felt guilty writing off while areas as not worth looking into. It’s not fair, and while I don’t feel ready to be that kind of pioneer, but the state could do a whole lot more. Economic and racial segregation are real problems, even here.
comments. Thanks for the great diary! I just linked to it on my Facebook page because it deserves more attention.
The problem in one word is poverty. Central High School has a good reputation as a high school, other schools, particularly Commerce, are somewhat lacking. I teach in East Longmeadow, a suburb of Springfield. It’s probably the most economically accessible of the three affluent suburbs around Springfield. I have METCO kids and kids, both of color and white, who move to EL. My friend the METCO supervisor says most kids could do well in Springfield, but there are all sorts of “distractions” that threaten to lead them down the wrong path. Those distractions–gangs, fights, maybe drugs–are mostly absent from our schools. (I’m not sure about how drugs compare between urban and suburban communities). The root of most educational evil, however, is poverty and the problems it causes.
The solution is one word is jobs that pay a living wage and promise of a life lived in dignity and legitimate hope for a better future.
Massachusetts is a wealthy state, among the wealthiest in the nation. Springfield suffers, more than anything else, from being poor. All the things you mention are part of the solution.
It seems to me that until we, as a state, make solving our wealth and income concentration problem a top priority, none of the things you mention will happen.
Thanks for a great post.
I like that you started your list of “what needs to be done” with the need for a change in attitude. Here in the Patrick Administration, we think that we are only going to make progress in Springfield and similar cities if (1) we believe that Springfield and its residents can be productive and successful; (2) we acknowledge that this will require some help from the state; and (3) we care that Springfield and its residents become productive and successful, if for no other reason than because if they are not, it limits how productive and successful our whole state will be. Those three points may seem obvious, but I am convinced we lose a lot of interest in “what needs to be done” in Springfield and similar cities because people simply don’t agree with one or more of those statements. So I think your comments are right on.
If people do agree with those starting principles, what next? We think two things need to happen, both of which have been referred to in the post and comments. First, we need to work with these cities to make them places where businesses with choices will choose to locate and where people with choices will choose to live. For example, there are a lot of interesting entrepreneurs in Western Massachusetts and we are doing things to get more of them to set up shop in Springfield. Second, we need to create more opportunities for all residents to get good jobs. We are creating and growing new programs with Springfield Technical Community College and Holyoke Community College that do just that. UMass opening in Springfield next month will help with that too.
Greg,
(You don’t mind if I jettison the honorifics here on BMG do you?)
I know we are in the waning days of the governor’s administration, but I would also like to offer you, your colleagues and your successors one piece of advice that I have seen on the ground, writing about Springfield and its civic life. If you have an idea, proposal, program or whatever that works, do not be afraid to push…and sometimes push hard. While the state elected branches that reside in Boston may share a constituency with those electeds that reside here, those in Boston with good ideas can advocate and act alone for the sake of the people and the city here. Obviously, cooperation, persuasion and acclimation are best. I’m just saying that when that does not happen, be not afraid to act on your own, too. If the idea is right and backed by sound reason, you will have allies here, even if they lack an honorific of their own.
We do like to work in partnership with local leadership, but we are not afraid to push. This comes up often with respect to housing. We need more housing built, especially rental housing, but not all communities are on board with that.
Why aren’t casinos discussed in this (otherwise good) article? They may or may not help, but isn’t that part of the equation?
…
If you had asked me a week ago to answer, without preparation, what I thought about Springfield Mass… I would have said, “city that progress left behind.’ This is completely uninformed and perhaps even biased. I’ve only once been to Springfield. I’ve been all over the CommonWealth. I love the Berkshires and I love the Bay. My grandfather was born in Haverhill and my grandmother (his wife) born in Braintree. My wife an I love to visit antique shops all over, from Essex (some of our favorites) to the Berkshires (the Cape often has good stuff, but the prices are much increased…). We’ve vacationed in a Cambridge bed n breakfast before the boys were born and in a Hancock (south of Pittsfield) ski area after, in Truro when they were young and in many places in between. We love this state… but we’ve never really thought of Springfield as part of the state. I don’t know if that is, strictly speaking, unfair or just a function of how little impact Springfield has had in our lives. Every once in a while there’s a vague sense that I should maybe see the Basketball hall of fame. But then the green side of my brain kicks in an reminds me that, while there are many Celtics in the hall, there are a lot of other, lesser, teams represented also and I lose enthusiasm at that point… ( I realize there’s not logical reason for keeping Kobe Bryant out of the HoF but still… #!%*!$!#! him. )
The one and only time I’ve been to Springfield was rather excruciating. It was about 4 years ago. I was on the way to Burlington Vt for a business trip. I took an Amtrak train from Worcester that connected to another train in Springfield and from there the train went to Burlington. When I purchased the tickets I realized that there would be six hour layover in Springfield. “No problem”, I thought, “As surely Springfield will have a restaurant or two to while away the time…” Boy was I wrong. The Amtrak station was little more than a box with some seats. Surrounding the train station was some textbook examples of urban blight. Not, ordinarily, averse to walking long distances I set out to see if I could find some place to sit, have a brew, maybe watch a game or whatever was on the screen while I waited for the train. Nothing. I very quickly notices more than a few people idly standing on street corners. I have no actual proof that they were dealing drugs, but I had a strong intuition after a few minutes of watching some cars stop, the briefness of their conversations, etc… I shortly gave up the search and returned to the station. I read the books I had brought for the evenings in the hotel for the five hours remaining until the train to VT arrived. That was my sole experience of Springfield.
That’s what I’ve thought about Springfield. My brief stop made me feel most unwelcome. The time between trains indicated to me that few passed through and the surrounding areas indicated even less effort… Although, this diary has prodded me to look further. One of the things that made Springfield attractive in the 17th century when it was founded, I’m given to understand, was it’s fortuitous geography: it lies at the meeting of three (four?) separate rivers and is surrounded by lush and fertile land. I imagined that the infrastructure of commerce that had been bolted on to cities like Boston and New York (themselves fortuitous in geography), large freight yards, airports, etc, had been bypassed where Springfield was concerned.
Come to find out that West Springfield has one of the largest train yards in the CommonWealth and is, in fact, could be a major transportation nexus, perhaps one of the biggest in New England. It serves as a major point because it is equidistant from many places and remains fortuitous in it’s geography. It think that it is both amazing that this is so, and amazing that I did not know this… My brief (but arduous) experience in Springfield left me thinking that the town of Springfield cared little about what, or who, passed through their town, but this is apparently not the case… Looking on the electro-encyclo-wiki-info-matic tells me they are undertaking some renovations to their original train station so here’s hoping the next visit to Springfield is more enjoyable. What I don’t understand is why Springfield doesn’t (if it doesn’t) have a large airport dedicated to cargo, working hand-in-glove with the freight yard. Seems ideal…
Just some observations from one individual, and I don’t mean to suggest my outlook is representative… but I’ve been in the state about 40 of my 47 years and I’ve never felt particularly drawn to Springfield. Maybe I’m missing out.
You bring up key points for mid-size cities across the board, not just Springfield. I’m totally pooped right now, but will respond at length tomorrow. Just wanted to high five ya, tho, especially for your “fear factor” points
No Casinos included.
Here
Our next future here.
The regional economy cannot support the fictitious revenue numbers proposed by the gambling industry and their lawmaker lackeys. We have a vision and it’s better than urban low-roller casinos.
I am by no means a proponent of casinos, but I’d like to play the Devil’s Advocate for a minute to illustrate why they seem attractive to Springfield.
Casinos arrived with a promise of 3,000 jobs. That is substantial for a city that has a massive number of unemployed people. These seem like jobs that Springfield residents might actually be able to hold – they’re not high technology or out-of-reach professional positions. They arrived with a transformative development plan, proposing to redevlop a downtown area that was badly damaged by the tornado that went through in 2011. Many buildings were demolished by the tornado and would not be rebuilt in the foreseeable future because there is no demand for construction downtown. There’s a lot of empty and vacant lots down there.
Look at the comments here regarding people’s perceptions of Springfield. Nothing going on downtown. Nothing to do. No restaurants. No people. A ghost town. That is largely true. Bringing thousands of people downtown daily seems pretty good given all that. MGM also promised retail development and entertainment – movies, concerts, etc.
Yes, a casino will ultimately hurt the region. As a Springfield resident who has seen almost zero regional concern for the city, I’m not so sure I care so much that this is going cause some restaurants in Northampton or West Springfield to close. No one consulted Springfield before building the Holyoke Mall – which really sucked the retail dollars away from a lot of Springfield’s businesses. I can’t imagine that MGM will be a passive partner, allowing the city’s reputation to harm its business. I doubt it would stand for someone dealing drugs across from its restaurants. I don’t think it can hurt Springfield any more because we are on the bottom rung. As someone said at one of the debates, the 2009 recession wasn’t that big of a drop for us because we have been in a recession for 15 years.
Some of the ideas in this thread are very good – I think a WPA-style program for cities would be a great thing. I think that more college students in Springfield would be great too – maybe the UMass thing will turn out to be a seed that develops into a downtown campus. I do like things that the Patrick administration has been doing – with the Gateway Cities initiative, and with something like “innovation districts” which try and concentrate a lot of creative energy into an urban area.
The one perspective that people in Boston may not see is that there is so much developable land in communities surrounding Springfield that Springfield is not attractive for development. Springfield isn’t like Boston. If a high-tech manufacturer wants to come to this area, are they going to try and redevelop an existing building downtown, or are they going to plow a farm in Agawam to build a factory on a 50-acre site? Employees want the 50-acre site so they can easily drive in and out to their suburban homes and not have to worry about “downtown”. Every suburban and rural community is competing to get this kind of development. They can offer far lower property taxes because they’re not supporting the infrastructure that a city supports.
Springfield isn’t going to be transformed by transportation-based initiatives unless high-speed rail becomes super-high-speed rail. We can’t take the same path to gentrification as Somerville or even Worcester because we can’t latch onto Boston’s engine – we’re too far away. Cosmetic improvements are nice, and probably necessary but we have done them before and they don’t lead to anything. With budget cuts, those are the first things to go.
Focusing on colleges is a pretty good plan. We do have four existing colleges. STCC is a state school, but it is a 100% commuter school. It has not spurned any development around it as people drive in and drive out. In fact, it has ruined the area around it because of the many, many empty lots required for parking. The other three colleges have mostly bunkered themselves away from the residents – two of them are in marginal neighborhoods, and are probably feeling the ill effects of them.
The UMass experiment may be a seed that eventually develops, but due to the way it played out, it isn’t going to do much. The UMass Satellite will be housed in Tower Square – one of Springfield’s office skyscrapers. It has its own parking garage, so students will drive in, park, and drive out. It is a start, and hopefully some of those students will be brave enough to venture out onto the streets to frequent some businesses.
Springfield needs to develop our own niche. Ideally it would be a high-tech manufacturing town, but I see no viable path to getting there. Maybe it’s a casino town, maybe it’s a college town, maybe there is something else, I don’t know. I do know that we need help to do it though.
Then what? That’s the question a leader with vision has to ask. Yes, no doubt a casino will bring a jolt of adrenaline to the heart of the city, but the arteries are frail, the surrounding tissue is infected with disease, and the blood is void of key nutrients. A few more beeps on the EKG and then what?
Thanks for your post “nopolitician”… You make some very good points. I do not think the casino/retail complex voted on by the decided majority of Springfield residents will hurt at all. Springfield’s unemployment rate is almost double that of the rest of the state. Many of these people have no college degree or professional training. Unemployment breeds poverty and poverty breeds crime, drugs and gangs. If the modified casino brings 3,000 permanent jobs it will be a positive force in reducing the problems the city now faces. And the mitigating monies to help other Springfield area businesses will help, too, in hundreds of thousands of dollars in local business vendor contracts. (It’s easy for people with degrees and 6 figure salaries to pontificate on how it would be better for these poor people to work in high tech or bio tech instead of hoping that a casino will present a job opportunity. They are so out of touch with people who need a job right now to make a rent payment that is already months overdue.)
Such unwarranted pejorative biases. Many people like myself and my construction blue-collar working class family members understand that the casinos are exactly what a poverty stricken and largely forgotten city where I have toiled for most of my adult life should never, ever be allowed.
Jobs? Horseshit! Tens of thousands of casino workers have been laid-off and casinos are getting tax subsidies and bailouts by taxpayers as well as going belly-up.
When the region loses $500 million per year in discretionary (lost) money, local businesses lose. Employment does not have a net gain. Governance by gimmick with an industry that is saturated and losing customers.
Construction is the only economic development component of casinos.
What about Forest Park and the neighboring communities whose property values and quality of life diminishes with an urban local-low roller casino? It’s okay for hard working people and retirees on fixed incomes to have their property values going down some more while property taxes go up?
Springfield’s recent unemployment was 7.5%
The advent of sustainable living wage jobs is not pursued or touted by the special interests who want to suck wealth out of the region to a multi-national corporate monopoly at the expense of local businesses.
MGM states that they will suck $500 million out of the regional economy.
Make rent? Bite me.
Try being a human service worker in this climate and see the political graft and good ole white boys club chumming together to ruin a city that can make a turnaround.
Did you read the links I posted above?
Here’s one for Deval L. Patrick (6 plus++ figure income) and Representative Ben Swan who care about the disadvantaged youth of color:
Young men of color – highest risk group
Read it an weep. Another transfer of wealth that further enshrines poverty and risk behaviors in a community of color. Is this the joy of capitalism or slavery by a different name?
heartland, you wrote…”MGM states that they will suck $500 M out of regional economy?” Why would they ever state that!! Please show your link to source.
Also, Springfield unemployment rate for workers with no college degree is higher than 7.5%. Casinos, restaurants, hotels hire people without degrees, train them and pay them with benefits. The young men of color of whom you speak could use those 3,000 jobs in Springfield. A job is the best antidote for poverty.
…by year three of operations:
Source: http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/06/mgm_springfields_finances_revenue_projections_rated_well_by_massachusetts_gaming_commissions_enrique_zuniga.html
Casinos suck money out of the local economy, mainly out of the pockets of poorer people who can least afford to lose that money. They create more problem gamblers than jobs, and if we are truly a Commonwealth, we should continue to disallow casinos.
The 7.5% you quote is the metropolitan region called “Springfield” – which is basically defined as Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties and a little bit of Connecticut (the Pioneer Valley). The city of Springfield’s unemployment rate was 10.5% in July 2014.
That number doesn’t count people who are not looking for employment. You have to look at the percentage of people in the workforce to truly understand the trouble we are in. The Boston Fed, in a 2009 report, noted that “in Memorial Square [one of Springfield’s poorest neighborhoods], only a third of the population 16 and over was in the labor force (working or looking for work) and 16 percent of those in the labor force were unemployed;”. It also noted that “in Sixteen Acres [one of Springfield’s wealthier neighborhoods – though still only average when gauged against surrounding towns], two-thirds of the population 16 and over was in the labor force and 7 percent of the labor force was unemployed.”
Assuming that the Sixteen Acres neighborhood workforce participation is “normal”, that means that the Memorial Square unemployment rate is 58%!.
When I dug for more data, I was astounded. Look at the percentage of the population classified as Low or Moderate Income (LMI) in Springfield versus Middle and Upper Income (MUI) these other cities and towns:
Agawam: 18% LMI, 82% MUI
West Springfield: 20% LMI, 80% MUI
Westfield: 23% LMI, 77% MUI
Springfield: 75% LMI, 25% MUI.
Data was not available for the smaller towns, which are considered to be wealthier than Agawam, West Springfield, and Westfield. You’ll see that from the next stat.
Now look at the median household incomes in surrounding communities:
Agawam: $74k
East Longmeadow: $95k
Longmeadow: $105k
Ludlow: $70k
Southwick: $84k
West Springfield: $68k
Westfield: $70k
Wilbraham: $105k
Springfield: $41k
Now let’s look at labor force participation:
Agawam: 68%
East Longmeadow: 68%
Longmeadow: 62%
Ludlow: 60%
Southwick: 69%
West Springfield: 67%
Westfield: 56% (a surprising outlier)
Wilbraham: 67%
Springfield: 58.6%
It seems fair that a typical rate would be 67%. That means that Springfield’s unemployment rate of 10.5% is actually about 21.6% when you consider what should be full employment. Then look at the median incomes and realize that they are a little more than half of the surrounding towns – this should be a big, fat red flag for everyone in the state.
I don’t see how 3,000 jobs in Springfield is going to make matters much worse for Springfield. I don’t see why we should “take one for the team” when the team hasn’t been concerned about us at all.
the business model is predicated on taking wealth out of a region.
The 2009 statistics are extremely grim.
Those are not the numbers today.
Respectfully to you nopolitician, income inequality is the result of casino capitalism AND, the “team” supports Springfield through the enormous annual aid that it receives.
Heartlanddem, that’s the precise attitude that I’m talking about. You’re telling us “be grateful for what you get because you get a lot”. We may get a lot in absolute terms, but we don’t get anywhere the amount we need. Take a drive someday, spend some time on the streets.
A casino capitalism economy may have produced Springfield’s situation, but I don’t see anyone getting up off the couch to reverse that. It seems that as long as Springfield and a couple of other urban areas have the 75% low-to-moderate-income residents, and everyone else has a 25% – 75% ratio, everyone is pretty OK with that.
in and around have dedicated their time, treasure and talent to the urban center. Our thousands of hours in tornado recovery volunteerism is one recent example. We desperately do not want to see it die.
That is what I am fighting for – and have been for the past three decades.
Suggesting words that I did not say is not fair game or discourse.
I agree that insufficient help both in quantity of resources but specifically quality of resources has not been delivered. It has not been vigorously sought by Springfield political establishment either. Our congressman is the ranking member on House Ways & Means……there is no excuse for the insufficient representation and lack of initiative from that seat.
There is not one example of a regional urban casino that has been a successful, sustainable economic development project with spin-off and ancillary gain….anywhere.
There is plenty of information about failures…..daily.
If a casino were the answer or even a partial answer, I would be all in.
It is not.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/09/01/promises-dont-pan-out.html
… I don’t know as anybody was suggesting that Springfield becomes a ‘bedroom community’ for Boston. My point was mostly about freight — moving actual goods to and from — as an honest to gosh engine of your own. It’s not glamorous or sexy like ‘high speed rail’… but being (roughly) equidistant from a lot of cities, with existing rail and freight yards in place… could be pretty powerful. 90% of goods travel over water, but they eventually have to get inland and rail is the way to do this. Add an airport and a trucking terminal, you’ve got all bases covered.
The other thing about existing rail is that right-of-ways and access has been worked out. This means that other infrastructures that require these things, cable and internet for example, are easily overlaid unto this. The port of Amsterdam, for example, in the Netherlands, is one of the busiest ports in the world. It’s also one of the first and still one of the largest peering points for interconnects for internet providers in the world. It’s not all that visible but it’s a large part of their economy. They did this deliberately. The City of Dublin, Ireland, did something similar and went all in for building datacenters because, they reasoned, their geography was ideal. They weren’t wrong and Microsoft built a big one there, and Google is building two.
The engine that is Springfield right now doesn’t seem to be up to speed. From what I’m seeing and hearing, however, the potential may well be there…
Rotterdam is one of the world’s largest ports.
… =-)
Both Rotterdam and Amsterdam are ports. Rotterdam is the larger of the two, and is one of the largest in the world. The port of Amsterdam is not too far behind and it is, most certainly, also a port.