Project Overview

East Milton Square is a healthy business district of the Town of Milton featuring a vibrant array of retail, services, and office uses. The Square is surrounded by equally thriving residential neighborhoods on all sides. Nonetheless, there is a general agreement that the East Milton Square area does have some problems, including:

• I-93 bisects East Milton Square. The presence of this major, grade-separated highway means a less-than seamless connection to the Post Office, Saint Agatha’s church and school, offices, and the neighborhood to the west of the Square.
  • In the 1990’s a deck was placed over I-93 stretching from Adams Street in the north to Boulevard Street in the South. This deck supports The Honorable Joseph M. Manning Community Park, which was intended to reunite the two halves of East Milton Square by providing a pleasant, green pedestrian corridor over I-93. Unfortunately the park remains little utilized as either a pedestrian corridor or even a place for area residents and workers to relax.
• Despite the health and strength of the businesses in East Milton Square, there is a widespread perception that the current supply of parking does not adequately serve local shops and offices.

The East Milton Square Parking and Access Study

To address the issues outlined above, the Town of Milton commissioned The East Milton Square Parking and Access Study. This year-long study began by analyzing local travel and traffic patterns, parking usage, business needs, and an array of other factors to gain an understanding of current conditions in East Milton Square. With a solid grounding in current conditions, the project team worked closely with the Town of Milton and all impacted stakeholders to develop q set of options for the redesign of East Milton Square. The options developed seek to:

• Provide demonstrable transportation benefits: easing congestion, improving pedestrian access and fostering multi-modal connections.
• Improve safety: reducing the frequency and severity of crashes and conflict between the various transportation modes using the roadways of East Milton Square.
• Environmental benefits: improving air quality and the pedestrian environment.
• Aesthetic benefits: introducing new open space or reinvigorating existing open space and providing an improved streetscape.
• Foster local business: maintaining and improving the area’s business climate.
• Protect nearby residential neighborhoods: ensuring that local streets do not become detours around or parking lots for East Milton Square.
• Balance costs with benefits: ensuring that the cost of the proposed solution is aligned with the benefits it would confer.
• Phasing: offer a phased approach to allow early action steps to begin as soon as possible.

Working with the Community

Between developing an understanding of current conditions in East Milton Square, creating options for the area’s redesign, and then refining those options for a final decision by the Town of Milton regarding how to proceed, the study ran for approximately one year with the consultant team's final report submitted in June of 2011. Howard/Stein-Hudson, the lead consultant of the project team, and the Town, worked to ensure that a project of this magnitude was accomplished with the community, and not just for it. It has been a privilege for the consultant team to work with you, representatives of your local businesses, and your leaders, both elected and appointed to develop the best solution for East Milton Square.

How does the Public Involvement Process Work?

This project’s public involvement process proceeded along two parallel and mutually-supporting tracks: virtual and face-to-face.

This Web site served as the core of the virtual effort. Throughout the course of this study, the website  grew and developed, posting new materials on the project documents page to help users gain a better understanding of the project. Many individuals lack the time to attend public meetings, but by posting presentations and other materials developed to support the public involvement process on the website, we have extended the impact of these documents beyond the sessions at which they were presented and allow website users to learn about the project on their own time and make informed comments to us through email.

The project team took comments made by email just as seriously as those made in public meetings. Such comments played a role in shaping the project’s outcome and were documented in its final report. Members of the community were also encouraged to follow the project on facebook and twitter. Announcements regarding upcoming meetings, new content on the project website, or other project milestones were placed on both facebook and twitter. 

The face-to-face effort began in July, 2010 with the first meeting of the Business and Citizen Advisory Committee (BCAC). The BCAC was constituted by the Board of Selectmen to assist the Town and the project team with the study. Over the course of the study, members of the project team met with the BCAC approximately every six weeks to develop and refine concepts for the redesign of East Milton Square. An initial version of these concepts, as well as the project team’s understanding of current conditions in the Square, were shared with the community at a general public meeting in October, 2010. The comments obtained at this meeting were used by the project team and the BCAC to further refine concepts for the redesign of the Square. These refined concepts were brought back to the community at large at a second meeting held in March, 2011. After further refinement, the final recommendations of the BCAC and project team were presented to the public at a third and final meeting May, 2011. Over the course of the project, the project team briefed local elected officials several times to ensure that these community leaders were fully aware of project developments. The Town and project team encouraged local elected officials or their representatives to attend all three of the community meetings as well.