on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and all day on Sunday, allowing the restaurants to bring their tables and chairs out for the afternoon and night service. There, the main business district is closed from 5 p.m.
She points to Winchester, where she managed one of the company’s operations, where all sides appeared to be heard.
So I understand a 24/7 closure there I think a modified closure would be what’s best” along Leonard Street, she said. Yet the two locations are quite different as Waltham is “very restaurant heavy center and so that’s why people go there. “Retail these days is really about the experience, the actual shopping in the store and it’s also about the convenience,” Castagno said.Ĭastagno said Belmont’s traffic plan is similar to Waltham’s layout for Moody Street that relies on the street being closed. It was that concern that Castagno and her mother joined several fellow retailers on the Select Board’s Monday, June 15, Zoom meeting as the town was scheduled to review the new setup for Belmont Center.ĭeran Muckjian, the owner of The Toy Shop of Belmont on Leonard Street, spoke for the center’s business association members saying many of their customers are unwilling to park in the Claflin Street lot behind the shops and trek around the buildings – there is no direct cut through from the lot to the Center – while seniors with mobility issues require on-street and handicap parking close to the shops they patronize. “We feel that that didn’t really happen in Belmont so we’re a little bit upset about that,” she said. “We were just a little bit disheartened with the decision to close Leonard Street … with minimal consulting of retail businesses,” said Castagno. The only information she and her commercial colleagues received on the closing was “via an email for the Belmont Center Business Association, but that didn’t provide all the details,” said Castagno, daughter of Lisa Castagno who owns Revolve stores in Winchester, Lexington, Newton, two in Belmont and one on Boston’s Newbury Street. Charlie Baker approved outdoor service as the state slowly begins reopening from the economic standstill caused by the coronavirus. The shutting down of the Center’s main thoroughfare was approved three days earlier by the Belmont Select Board in an effort to assist the town’s restaurants with alfresco dining after Gov. “I’ve never seen Belmont Center in the morning as quiet as it has been for the last few days” as the lack of foot traffic had “significantly reduced sales,” she said. Since then, Castagno has seen the town’s business center grind to a halt. The only exceptions: MBTA buses and emergency vehicles.
“We’ve been open since the first day we were able to open on Monday ” and customers were coming back to the store, said the manager of the Leonard Street consignment store.īut on Thursday morning, June 10, as she and other retailers were opening their doors, DPW trucks were outside their shops delivering crowd control barriers and earthmovers had placed jersey barriers at either end of the street to block traffic from entering.īy 11:30 a.m., the roadway through Belmont’s largest commercial district was closed to all traffic until Labor Day. Laura Castagno said she had growing hope the first-week Revolve Boutiques in Belmont Center was reopened would get increasingly busy after three months being locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: Lauren Castagno, manager at Revolve Boutiques on Pleasant Street.
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