AMHERST — Pavement usually reserved for automobile parking will be temporarily transformed into landscaped oases designed to provide a relaxing environment and to encourage al fresco dining.
Amherst Business Improvement District Executive Director Sarah la Cour said she is hoping that residents and visitors alike will enjoy seeing several parking spaces in downtown become pop-up parklets next month.
“It’s a fun idea to show what outside seating areas might look like,” la Cour said.
The Select Board on Monday authorized these miniature parks, each of which will have tables and chairs, plants and flowers and an artificial turf carpet to mimic grass.
La Cour explained that there are not many public dining spots in downtown, with most tables and chairs set up on sidewalks associated with specific businesses. That means that people who want to eat a slice of pizza or a sandwich outdoors likely do so sitting on a bench with their food in their laps. The parklets offer an opportunity to buy a meal to go or bring a bag lunch or dinner.
The parklets also offer a vision of how additional seating areas, supplementing those already outside cafes and restaurants, might work in the downtown.
The concept is not a new one, as this summer there has been an extended pop-up park in front of Northampton City Hall, and Northampton is also planning to build a parklet in its downtown Crackerbarrel Alley.
People may also be familiar with them from an experiment in September 2015, when spaces in Amherst and Northampton were greened up for Park (ing) Day, an event that began in San Francisco in 2005, when an art studio called Rebar put sod, a tree and a bench in a parking spot to draw attention to the need for green space in urban communities.
The plan is to begin the event Aug. 16 with a parklet in front of the Visitor Information Center, 35 South Pleasant St., and move the following day to a spot near The Toy Box, 201 North Pleasant St. Then, two parking spaces on Boltwood Walk between Johnny’s Tavern and Fratelli’s, overlooking the Enos Cook Fountain at Sweetser Park, will become a parklet Aug. 18, which is also an evening when a Downtown Beats concert is scheduled for the park. The event will conclude Aug. 19 in the parking lot in front of Town Hall next to the North Common.
Each day, la Cour said, the parklets will be set up in the early morning hours, with multiple orange traffic cones surrounding them. At 8 p.m., they will be taken down. A person with the Amherst BID will be monitoring each location.
La Cour previously got approval for the plan from Police Chief Scott Livingstone, Fire Chief Tim Nelson and Department of Public Works Superintendent Guilford Mooring.
While Select Board member Alisa Brewer supported the idea, she voted against the parklets because the one situated in front of The Toy Box may be too close to the ongoing detour associated with the roundabout construction at East Pleasant and Triangle streets and the One East Pleasant mixed-use project.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.