From the Vault: The Crossing

Welcome to Downtown Crossing.  This is a section of Boston that has seen better days for SO many reasons.  It’s an area where vehicle traffic is off limits and people can walk in the streets, there are shops, as you can see on the left is the huge Macy’s department store.  On the right used to be the equally huge Filene’s and Filene’s Basement department stores, now gone.  This is also the area of the city with lots of high priced diamond retailers.  Unfortunately there is a flip side to this coin as there always is.  This is also an area with a good amount of reported crimes.  The police presence is high and they do the best that they can but its a popular hang out area for large groups of inner city kids, homeless hang out here a lot, and after 5pm business’s start closing their doors for the day.  People commute home, and the area becomes desolate.  The Filene’s building out of frame on the right was demolished to make way for a new skyscraper, however funding fell through and now we have a huge hole in the middle of the neighborhood.  It’s something none of the citizen’s like or wants but the hole remains. The city is trying to bring some life back to the area by having different events, like art fairs on the streets, but again once they close up shop at 5 the place is a dead area.  Some say that the lack of vehicular traffic is what is killing the area, but that is only one part of the equation.  Shops need to stay open later, restaurants are needed, some new residential.  You need to create a reason for people to want to be here and right now that reason is not here.