Enlisting road scholars

BELMONT -- It has a lot of potential, this winding, curving stretch of road. It jogs past the gracious greens of the Oakley Country Club and the stark white steeple of the Waverley Congregational Church, past architectural gems and storefronts.

But today, the Belmont Street-Trapelo Road corridor is more of a hustle-and-bustle highway than a pedestrian-filled boulevard.

The two-lane roadway has evolved into a vehicular free-for-all, as motorists create their own, multiple travel lanes. Because the road is so wide, cars go fast and walkers tend to avoid the area, which doesn't help the shop owners who rely on foot traffic to keep business steady.

But all this may change someday.

Graduate students in urban design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are studying the 2.5-mile corridor, which starts on Belmont Street at the Cambridge line, runs onto Trapelo Road, and continues through to Waverley Square.

As they do, they'll be looking for answers to this question: How do you come up with the right type of zoning to preserve the corridor's landmark structures and offer a mix of homes and shops?

The MIT class project comes at a time when there's plenty of other interest -- by residents, business owners, and town officials -- in improving the commuting corridor.

"It could be so lovely," said Sue Bass, a member of Belmont Citizens Forum, the group that made the MIT study possible. Bass said a member of the forum e-mailed an MIT professor last spring asking if students could take on the study and the professor agreed.

Last week, Bass and others concerned about the corridor walked the project area, passing ornately detailed Victorian homes, European-style shops, and then, vacant, weed-strewn paved parking lots.

"This is our main thoroughfare," she mused. "We should make it safe for pedestrians and beautiful, so it could attract the type of businesses that we would like in the town."

Bill Engstom, a Belmont resident whose home is about a half-block off of Trapelo Road, said minor adjustments could make the road a better place for walkers.

Pointing at the sun-scorched sidewalk, he said, "Trees could go here, for shade. It would make a difference."

The MIT students, however, have been asked to do more than suggest aesthetic improvements; they've been asked to figure out ways to preserve the corridor's turn-of-the-century charm, as contemporary development pressures loom.

Some residents are worried the corridor's zoning doesn't protect the Victorian homes and two-story Tudor-style shops from being converted into high-rise apartment buildings and block-long superstores. The most recent example is a large drug store being built on a lot that many residents had hoped would be used for housing.

"The zoning doesn't necessarily reflect what the residents want the street to be," said Thayer Donham, a Belmont resident who participated in last week's walk.

The town's Historic District Commission presented the students with a list of buildings it wants preserved. They include the former Waverley Square fire station, built in 1873 as a schoolhouse; Waverley Congregational Church, built in 1870; the red-brick W.T. Phelan building at 63 Trapelo Road, built as a bank; and Victorian houses from 564 to 622 Trapelo Road.

The Belmont Citizens Forum has asked the students to pay attention to Our Lady of Mercy Church, which the Archdiocese of Boston will close by December.

It's unclear why Trapelo Road got its name, but the most popular theory is that it was named by fur traders to indicate that there were traps in nearby Beaver Brook. Through the years, it has evolved into a bustling thoroughfare. Today, Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority's trackless trolleys transport passengers along the corridor toward Harvard Square.

Because of trolley cars and a commuter rail stop at Waverley Square, the corridor had evolved into a desired location for car dealerships and auto repair shops, as people could leave their cars and access public transit here.

But that's no longer the case, and the car lots now sit empty, rife with development potential, alongside the homes and neighborhood shops.

In the past few years, several groups have begun working to make the corridor a better place to live, work, and shop.

"There are a lot of competing interests on the corridor," said Jeffrey Wheeler, the town's planning coordinator.

"There are the cars going through the corridor and the people who want to shop in the various commercial areas, and these groups don't always mix well," he said.

"Through-traffic, for the most part, is really winning the battle, but now people are saying, 'Enough, enough.' "

Two years ago, the Planning Board secured a state grant to conduct an economic development study on the Belmont Street-Trapelo Road corridor. About 40,000 cars travel the road each day, "and part of what we were looking at is how to get those cars to stop and shop in Belmont," Wheeler said.

"Do you make it one travel lane or two travel lanes?" he said.

The study has been completed, and the town is beginning to implement some of its recommendations, Wheeler said.

One of those changes will be addressed at an upcoming Town Meeting. A town committee has determined the best use for an abandoned fire station in Waverley Square is residences. Later this fall, Town Meeting will decide on a proposed zoning change for that property, and four other lots on Trapelo Road. The proposal calls for changing the zoning from a general residence to local business one, to allow multifamily dwellings and certain business uses. If approved, the former Waverley fire station will be converted into up to seven condominiums.

Another recommendation from the study calls for developing the air rights above the Waverley Square commuter rail stop, but that project is on hold because of a dispute among the neighbors, Wheeler said.

Also last year, parents of Butler School students persuaded the town to help the students get to school more safely by extending the sidewalk farther into the street at Hawthorne Street and Trapelo Road. The move means pedestrians have less ground to cover when crossing Trapelo Road.

Last spring, before the sidewalk was extended, a woman trying to cross that intersection was hit by a car and killed.

Also about a year ago, the citizens forum persuaded the town to adopt an international design for the Trapelo Road crosswalks. The design's 2-foot-wide white stripes make people crossing the street more visible to motorists. The forum donated $2,500 to the town to defray the costs of redesigning four crosswalks on Trapelo Road. Because of the group's efforts, the four crosswalks on Trapelo Road and all the others in town were upgraded.

Then, there's the work of the MIT students.

On Oct. 14, the students will present their preliminary ideas to the Board of Selectmen at its 7:30 p.m. meeting in Town Hall.

In December, they'll present final plans.

What happens after that is anyone's guess.

But Bass is prepared to wait.

"We are not expecting it to be a quick process," she said as she neared Waverley Square. "We don't want it to be a quick process."

"But," she lamented, "there's so much that could be done."