FITCHBURG - As uncommon as she may be as a mayor-elect - just 28 years old, the daughter of Chinese immigrants - Lisa Wong faces some decidedly common challenges when she takes the reins at City Hall this month.
They're challenges typical of small Massachusetts cities outside Route 128. More and more of her constituents don't speak English, don't have high-school degrees, don't have money or good jobs. Street life is often scant and crime abundant in a downtown that peaked decades ago and is now pocked with empty storefronts. A million square feet of mill space lies empty along a river only slowly recovering from the ravages of the industrial era. The city government is widely deemed to be heading toward bankruptcy and state receivership.
But Wong comes to office with a seemingly audacious proposal that she says can reverse the city's fortunes: Make Fitchburg fun again.
Along with the usual battery of plans for economic development, public safety, and education reform, Wong wants to imbue Fitchburg with the kind of vibrant, youthful social life that is often hard to imagine in the state's struggling old mill towns. She wants a whitewater rafting course down the North Nashua River, bike and walking paths along both of its now-flood-walled banks, a $30 million indoor water park at a Route 2 motel site, parks that host cross-country skiing and mountain biking, and an indoor rock-climbing venue inside an old mill complex.
With some marketing-worthy taglines already in mind - like "Be fit in Fitchburg" and "The fit, fun, funky place to be" - Wong dreams of 1,000 more people filling up apartments and lofts in the upper floors of vacant buildings downtown, Fitchburg State College graduates staying in town, and young professionals attracted by cheap housing with commuter-rail access to Waltham, Cam bridge, and Boston, and Mount Wachusett skiing minutes away.
Achieving Wong's vision could be as steep a climb as the hills that define Fitchburg, often called the second hilliest city in the nation after San Francisco. But that's what makes many observers of urban renewal think success in Fitchburg could become a model for similarly situated towns in Massachusetts and across the country.
"I admire her creativity; I don't envy her job," said Robert Forrant, a professor in the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell who has studied and written extensively about urban revitalization in small cities across New England. "If she can figure out how to attract that critical mass of people and investment in the context of that city, it wouldn't just be a model for the state, it would be a model for hundreds of similarly sized older mill cities."
Despite the city's fiscal woes, Wong said almost all of the projects she's eyeing would make use of state and federal grants and loan programs. She stressed that what she's offering is not a strict to-do list with a timetable, but examples from the kind of long-term vision she says Fitchburg hasn't had in years.
"The most important thing is vision," Wong said. "There are people, agencies, and funding sources that exist today to make these kinds of things happen. It's just a matter of coordination and good management."
Of Fitchburg's roughly 39,000 people, about 15 percent live below the poverty line, compared with 9.3 percent statewide in the most recent government estimates. Just 15 percent of residents over 25 have a college degree, less than half the state average. By state standards, real estate is shockingly inexpensive, with three-bedroom houses going for as little as $185,000 and an 11-bedroom Victorian with a carriage house recently listed for just $340,000.
Wong, who ran the city economic development agency for two years before running for mayor, has nothing if not optimism. "There are huge amounts of potential here - so much potential," Wong said in a recent interview. "I see this city as a blank slate. We have beautiful bones. The bones are the buildings and the hills."
Forty years ago, the waters of the North Nashua River flowing through town would change color day to day, depending on what color waste was being spewed from the local paper mills. With pollution abating thanks to ever-stricter federal regulations, Wong said, "We can turn 180 degrees to create something that is absolutely wonderful."
A frequent kayaker, she dreams of someday removing dams to create the kind of weekend downtown whitewater course in Fitchburg that Lowell offers in April and May as melting snows and spring rains make rapids on the Concord River. Pollution testing by the Nashua River Watershed Association has shown that, as uninviting as it may look today, the North Nashua is safe for boating roughly five days out of six when there's been dry weather that hasn't caused sewer overflows.
Like the MBTA Red Line connecting one vibrant neighborhood square after another in Cambridge, Wong visualizes a revitalized eight-mile North Nashua corridor, possibly with a new commuter-rail stop in West Fitchburg, serving as the spine connecting, on a much smaller scale, revitalized urban village centers across the city. As another model for Fitchburg, Wong cites Asheville, N.C., an artsy/sporty city that is close to mountain attractions. With new residents and new life, Wong hopes to see strengthening clusters of neighborhood restaurants and businesses similar to Newburyport, Northampton, and Salem.
In addition to its location at the end of an 80-minute train ride from Boston, one of the most widely cited sources of strength on which Fitchburg can build - and a key part of Wong's vision - is the state college, which has 5,200 students. The college is about one-third of a mile up from the train and bus station downtown, and much of that stretch is lined by vacant lots.
Interviews with more than a dozen students at the college last week indicated that many don't find crazy or hopeless the idea Fitchburg could one day become vibrant and exciting enough for them to want to begin a career there. Inexpensive housing and good access to Boston by train or Route 2, they say, are definitely appealing. But a lot, they add, would have to improve in Fitchburg.
"It has potential," said Malorie Bartlett, a junior from Lowell planning to become a teacher. There are a lot of cute areas of Fitchburg. But a lot of it is covered with grossness and crack houses. It's a project for people to rebuild what's already here."
Her friend Courtney Chauvin, a junior from Worcester, agreed that "it just needs to be cleaned up. You drive through nice areas of Fitchburg, but then you go over one street, and it's horrible."
For now, few students see much life attracting them to the downtown. "There's nothing to really do down there," said Corey Blaisdell, a freshman from Pepperell whose father owns an auto-body shop in Fitchburg.
Jessie Morris, a senior from Stoughton majoring in marketing, said she and her friends enjoy movies and bowling in Fitchburg, and easy access to Mount Wachusett for frequent snowboarding visits is "a definite plus. But downtown is very empty now. You get nervous walking downtown by yourself."
Asked what could make Fitchburg's or any other old city's center a place she'd consider living in after school, Kerry Byrne, a junior nursing student from South Boston, ticked off many elements of Wong's vision: "Nice restaurants. Nice stores. Clean streets. Community functions."
Byrne and several other students said they could envision Fitchburg somehow capturing more of the 20-something and student energy that has been so crucial to the revitalization of once-industrial cities such as Lowell, Northampton, and Somerville; and their imaginations seemed captured by Wong's fit-fun-funky vision. But as Curt Hehir, a sophomore from Trumbull, Conn., put it: "She has her work cut out for her."
