East Somerville Main Streets Hosts Forum on the Future

UPDATED AT 4:05 p.m.

More than three dozen East Somerville residents, business owners and community leaders gathered last night to share ideas and opinions during An Evening for Community, hosted by . 

"It's great to see people care about their neighborhood, the businesses, they all want to make it," said Susan Fontano, a life-long East Somerville resident and President of the East Somerville Main Streets Board. "I feel that we've been able to bring people together. You know, we're a vehicle for them to work with the City."  

Tables were set up around the room, and participants played a game of musical chairs of sorts--moving from table to table to discuss a variety of topics ranging from how to improve the "daily visual appearance" of the neighborhood, to ways to promote the district's "unique attributes" or how to recruit new business. The goal of each discussion was the same: to collect resident feedback to help guide the work of the organization in the year ahead. 

"It's these types of meetings with these people that are going to get things to happen," said Peter Tsourianis, who has lived in the neighborhood for just shy of 60 years and also serves on the East Somerville Main Streets Board. "We'll take this information and share it with the local pols that will look at it and say, I've got to do something." 

Conversation swirled among community members around ways to improve parking and lighting and ways to beautify the neighborhood. Suggestions included improving signs, decorating vacant store fronts, reducing cluttered window displays and eliminating grates. Talk also turned to what types of events and festivals the community group could sponsor to help make the neighborhood more of a destination.  A carnival, road races and a day to celebrate international cuisine were just a few of the ideas that bubbled up. 

Lynn Gervens owner of (and an East Somerville Main Streets Board Member) said she was excited about the turnout, particularly from local business owners like herself.

"That was great to see so many of them here tonight. Some who have been involved previously, but we haven't seen for a while. It would be great to reach out to some of the smaller, ethnic businesses that I don't feel are really represented well enough here. So, I think we really need to work on that more," she added. 

Carrie Dancy, the Executive Director of East Somerville Main Streets called the event a "big success" and said the next step for the group is to dig into and explore the ideas that were offered by the community. "I'm sure that what was presented was really only the surface and so it's really [finding] what's below that and getting these ideas in action," she said. 

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East Somerville Main Streets will host a special holiday edition of their First Tuesdays event on December 7th at  on Broadway from 6-8 p.m. Snacks will be served and trivia will be played. Stop by to catch up with your East Somerville neighbors, and to test your knowledge! Admission is $10, with all proceeds to benefit the organization.