Lower Atkinson Common site walk set for Tuesday

Aug 06, 2023

NEWBURYPORT — With Lower Atkinson Common residents growing concerned about plans to remove more than 20 trees from their neighborhood, the city has scheduled a site walk Tuesday in an attempt to assuage fears.

The trees would come down as part of Mayor Sean Reardon’s plan to double parking spots at Merrimac Street’s Lower Atkinson Common, from 45 to 90, as part of the Atkinson Common master plan.

Conservation Commission members will be leading the way starting at 4 p.m. City Special Projects Manager Kim Turner is expected to take the lead during the tour, which may also include Ward 4 City Councilor Christine Wallace.

“We’re using this opportunity to take the public who are interested in learning more about the project around the area where they can voice any concerns while seeing the site and hearing how folks are thinking it through,” Chief of Staff Andrew Levine said. “It should be a good opportunity to learn more and get some good feedback on this.”

Levine added that the administration has heard the concerns of neighbors who have spoken up about the project and is trying to address them in a timely manner.

“We’ve talked to a lot of neighbors throughout this process and there are a lot of stakeholders too,” he said. “We should be hearing from some of them again on Tuesday and we want to use the opportunity to address some of the concerns that they have. Because we haven’t had a bigger meeting on the site, so it’s important to take care of that.”

The roughly $569,512 federal American Rescue Plan-funded project is designed to alleviate parking and safety concerns where the Pioneer League plays baseball games. The proposal would include moving a small wetlands area roughly 10 feet to make way for new parking spaces.

“That’s a jurisdictional wetland so it’s only local and is kind of a manmade wetland,” Levine said. “The Conservation Commission will be discussing it but it should be easy to replicate it. We’ve also got a good plan for creating even more wetlands than were there before to make sure that we’re not doing anything that’s going to be a problem for the ecosystem.”

Levine added that there has been plenty of discussion on just how dangerous the parking situation can be on a busy Merrimac Street, where cars park at an angle and back out into traffic, and the new parking spaces will go along way to minimizing the problem.

“We’re going to create some extra parking on a pretty vacant part of the field,” he said. “We’re going to extend the gravel lot there and the project has been under review by a few different bodies – the Planning Board will be reviewing it and the Conservation Commission is looking at it now.”

The plan also calls for removing roughly 22 trees from Merrimac Street – a plan that longtime Plummer Avenue resident Barbara Keeler believes is a bad idea.

“It just seems like a crying shame, especially these days, when we know the importance of trees to encourage a healthy environment,” she said. “To tear all these trees down and then put in new ones will leave us with smaller trees that will provide nowhere near everything that these big trees do.”

Levine said the city has a plan to replace the trees on “a more than one-to-one basis.”

“There will be, however, many trees that need to be taken down. But they will be planting even more than that,” he said. “We’ve got a great plan for improving the tree canopy in this area with more strategic tree locations.”

Keeler said the plan seems unnecessary, rash and ill-considered.

“As far as I understand, they are going to change the parking lot on Merrimac Street and take down those trees,” she said. “But then the amount of parking spaces they’re going to add off of Merrimac Street seems to be way out of proportion as opposed to what is truly needed. They can park on Plummer and walk a little ways, especially when it’s not in use for so many months of the year. But those trees are there, all year round.”

The neighborhood trees also provide a noise and vision barrier, according to Keeler.

“I appreciate that they want to offer as many services as possible in the city but this just doesn’t seem necessary or even reasonable,” she said.

Keeler’s concerns were echoed in an Aug. 24 letter to The Daily News from Laurine Faro, who said many of the new parking spaces are not needed since the parking lots are used for only five months of the year. Faro also mentioned that the area is an owl and hawk nesting habitat.

Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at [email protected] or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.

Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at [email protected] or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.

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