In downtown Worcester. City Hall, built in 1898, during the city’s industrial heyday.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
‘The Worcester Telegram ran a story Feb. 16 headlined “Area college students shy away from downtown, other city attractions’’.
A big problem for Worcester is that its colleges are not virtually downtown, unlike in Providence, most notably with Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. And Johnson and Wales University is actually downtown, as are some URI and Roger Williams University units. This long-term presence has helped prop up Providence’s core even as some big old companies left town. The city’s very scenic location at the head of Narragansett Bay helps, too. And Worcester’s altitude and inland location make winter walking and driving there more problematical than in Rhode Island’s capital.
Worcester’s colleges are more on the periphery, making excursions to the old industrial city’s (sort of the Pittsburgh of New England) downtown more daunting. It will take a lot more marketing to get a lot more college kids in downtown Worcester, even as Providence’s downtown remains crowded with them.
It's too bad that “Downcity’’ Providence is no longer the company-headquarters place it was decades ago, but at least its college students are there in droves, spending money making the downtown safer. Crowded cities are usually safer cities.
I doubt that the arrival of the soon-to-be named something-else Pawtucket Red Sox will draw many college students, though maybe more than the terrific Worcester Art Museum.
To read The Telegram’s story, please hit this link.
Alumni Hall, on the hilly campus of the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester.
