With a community meeting in the works and a consultant team hired, the City plans for major redesigns of Hyde and Monument Squares appear ready to start rolling again after several lengthy delays.
The Centre and South Streets Streetscape and Transportation Action Plan developed general guidelines for the look and feel of the Centre/South corridor, and aimed to fix some specific traffic trouble spots. The planning first began in 2009.
Vineet Gupta, Boston Transportation Department’s director of policy and planning, said the City hired a consultant team— Boston-based Nitsch Engineering—in the fall and is planning a community meeting for sometime at the end of April.
“We really want to work hand-in-hand with the community of Jamaica Plain,” said Gupta.
He said the community meeting will be a “point of the departure” for the consulting team and City to begin work again. Gupta said the City will first need to get community consensus on concept designs before hopefully getting buildable drawings by April 2015.
There are already plans pending to shrink the Hyde Square rotary at Centre and Perkins streets to create more green space, and various sidewalk improvements in Jackson Square, as the Gazette previously reported.
There are also dueling plans for Monument Square, where Centre and South intersect. One plan would enlarge the traffic island containing the Soldier’s Monument, while the other would connect the island to the First Church in Jamaica Plain Unitarian Universalist property to create a new park.