Archive for the 'Walking' Category

What Is Your Community Walkability Score?

walking in Montclair neighborhood

I’m a big fan of the rating website, www.walkscore.com, but its algorithm relies mostly on the proximity of a house to stores and community resources.  But to find walkability rating, it’s not just about distance — it’s also about the quality and ease of the walk.  Factors like wide sidewalks, shade trees, good lighting and flat topography matter a great deal in determining a walkability rating.  I downloaded this walkability checklist from www.walkinginfo.org and walked through my own Watchung Plaza neighborhood in Montclair.

Here’s what I found, both good and bad.

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Anthropologie—the big retailer with modern urban style clothing and home goods–has opened its doors in Montclair in time for the holiday shopping season.  I’m sure there is some grumbling as people roll their eyes at $200 corduroy pants and worry that chain stores will threaten the character of our very indie town.  Me, I welcome Anthroplogie here.  I think ultimately we need a few William Sonomas and Gaps to anchor the smaller retail offerings of our town and keep it vibrant and walkable.  Unlike mom and pop shops, the big chain stores have national funding to stay open seven days a week and later in to the evening.  Anthropologie is open late–until 9 pm at night—my own preferred shopping time.

There’s a positive ripple effect.  With longer store hours people walk in the streets until later, and they’re more likely to go get some dinner or a coffee on Church Street after they’ve browsed (or shopped in the store).    Anthropologie gives outsiders another reason to bypass the mall and come visit Montclair, and maybe pop into Semplice or the Montclair Book Center.

What’s interesting is that more and more big retail stores want to be located in a walkable downtown like ours.  For the first time in forty years, the trend is shifting away from malls.  People want to shop locally.  They don’t want to get on a highway to buy a pair of jeans or that perfect gift.

This holiday season you’ll find me at the sale rack sometime around 8:30 pm.  Anthropologie is located at the corner of Church Street and Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair.

I’m not a big mall person.  The whole ordeal of driving 20 minutes only to look for parking for another 20 minutes has turned me off.  These days I’m shopping locally in Montclair, and starting today, Oct 15th, 50 plus stores will keep their doors open until at least 8 pm.  Some of my personal favorites are: Terra for their fair trade merchandise and homemade goodies, semplice for their hip take on home furnishings and the new Anthropologie for their inspiring retro-handmade combinations.

Here’s a list of all the stores that are extending their hours this holiday season:

Accents With Flowers

Afro-Brazilian Cultural Center of NJ

Alicia’s

Amanti Vino

American Sampler

Anthropologie

Artistic Illuminations of Montclair

Aunt Jean’s Toys & Treats

Blu Lotus

Bobbi Brown Studio

Buds For You

Catcom

Chez Renee

Cisco Station

ColorStoryHome

Creative Endeavors

Culture Couture

Dobbs

Dulce Candy Boutique

Euro Glass Art

Essex Fine Arts Gallery

Fleet Feet

Four Eyes & Ears

Gallery 51

Gallery Loupe

Go Lightly

Glenridge Taekwon-do

Hampton House

HipNotique

Irish & More

Jerry’s Antiques

Johari

Little Cricket

Makeready Press

Modern Yarn

Montclair Antique Center

Montclair Art Museum

Montclair Pet & Feed

Nest & Company

O Soleil

Parlor Hair Salon

People Store

Phil Cantor Photography

Ruby

Sahana Spa

Salon Organic

semplice

Stix-n-Stitches

Terra

Tory Janes

Urban Outfitters

The Woodhouse Spa

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I’m a fan of mixed use.  Mixed use is the practice of allowing different types of buildings to coexist in a single neighborhood – for example, residential space next to/on top of restaurants and businesses.   By adding vitality and activity to a neighborhood, mixed use benefits a community because residents are able to walk to things that they need, like stores, work, church and transit. But there are certain land uses that are best kept away from the rest of the neighborhood – gas stations among them.  In Montclair, two former gas station sites continue to undergo remediation for chemical contamination twenty years after they were first tested.   Both of the locations, in Upper Montclair on Valley Road and on Orange Road in the South End are near houses, condominiums and small businesses. Who needs to walk to a gas station anyway?

When I walk to Watchung Plaza from my Montclair home, I take a short route  through an interconnected grid of streets and through a small park.  I wave to my neighbor on the way.  I stop for a brief minute in the park to chat with a friend who’s on her way home from work (she’s just gotten off the 5:31 train from Manhattan).  It’s social.  It’s interactive.  It’s exercise.  It’s green.

On the other hand, it’s very difficult to walk to the train station, or the corner store to get milk in a town that is laid out in a branching street pattern with a series of dead-ends -aka cul-de-sacs- feeding in to a main artery. In these configurations, you can be a stone’s throw from your destination, but have to travel a mile to get there.  This may be a satisfactory layout for the car but not for the pedestrian or bike rider.

Watch this very clever video from the Congress for New Urbanism and you’ll see what I mean…

Sunday morning  historical walk/run and bike tour.

Don’t try this in just any suburb.  It takes a village, a real one, to make these sorts of walk/bike tours possible.  Streets that are interconnected on a grid, sidewalks, trees to shade the sidewalks, history , a reason, a community, merchants that are involved with their community and people to participate.  One of the many reasons I love Montclair.

August 9th, 11 a.m.  -a 5K walking/running tour of several historical sites. Sponsored by the Montclair Historical Society, Fleet Feet and Destination Montclair.

August 16th, 11 a.m. – a 4 mile bike tour including historical George Washington Boulder, Charles Shultz House, Clark House Van Vleck House & Gardens. Bike rentals available from Diamond Cycle, where the route begins.