Kristin Lafratta | MassLive

By Dan Glaun | MassLive

CitySquare, the half-billion dollar effort to turn Worcester's downtown into a hub of hotels, new apartments and glass-fronted commercial buildings, lies less than 500 feet from the bars and restaurants of the city's Canal District.

But for John Giangregorio, the owner of 3G's Sports Bar and a founding member of the Canal District Alliance, the distance feels longer, due to what he says is City Hall's prioritization of downtown over neighborhoods like his.

Just ask him about the Green Street Bridge. Canal District business owners have for years asked the city for funding to clean up and brighten the concrete underpass that connects the district to downtown, he said, in an effort make pedestrians feel safe walking between the city's commercial centers.

But, he said, they have continually been rebuffed.

"I think the city if anything has undermined what's happening in some of the neighborhoods," Giangregorio said in an interview. "That is a simple, few thousand dollar investment in connecting City Square and Canal District."

In an interview, City Manager Ed Augustus Jr. said improvements to the Green Street Bridge require coordination with the railroads and the federal government, and that the city does not have authority to act unilaterally.

"We're certainly looking at the issue," Augustus said.

In interviews with MassLive, Giangregorio and other stakeholders in Worcester's neighborhoods, from developers to social service and community organizers, described a deep-set belief that Worcester's economic renaissance had not been developed with their interests in mind.

"Were always looking for the next greatest thing, but it hasn't materialized," Giangregorio said. "I think that some of the downtown businesses and developers have been sold a bill of goods. It's just not credible."

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Kristin Lafratta | MassLive

Worcester's downtown has undergone a wholesale transformation in recent years, with monuments to the city's economic struggles -- the vacant Galleria mall, the city common with a reputation as a drug use hotspot -- cleaned up and redeveloped.

The Galleria, which was revamped as the Worcester Common Outlets before it shut down, was demolished. In it's place has arisen Mercantile Center, which now hosts 500 UMass Memorial Medical Center IT workers. The Grid, a block-sized complex of apartments and street-level storefronts, is home to the Brew on the Grid coffee shop, the brand-new Stix noodlebar and a beer garden scheduled to open this summer. The city's red-hot hospitality business -- and a series of friendly tax deals -- have sparked the development of multiple new hotels.

More than $2 billion in downtown development has been completed in recent years and over 500 housing units have been built, according to the Worcester Chamber of Commerce. Augustus has voiced ambitions to create a true 18-hour downtown -- a city center that can support the transit, nightlife and affordable housing needs of young workers who in previous years may not have considered Worcester as a potential home.

Augustus said the city's focus on redeveloping downtown is long overdue -- and does not conflict with supporting outlying neighborhoods.

"For a long time we had strong neighborhoods with vibrant business district, but we had a very underperforming downtown. We had an enormous mall that was empty, many storefronts that were empty," Augustus said. "A great city has both vibrant neighborhoods and a vibrant downtown business district."

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Developer Developer Paul Collyer in the basement of one of his Chandler Street properties.

Augustus listed a series of projects he said had directly benefitted the neighborhoods, among them a tax agreement to save hundreds of jobs at the supermarket supply company Imperial Distributors, an $838,000 tax deal to support a Kelley Square project by developer Allen Fletcher, renovations at parks across the city and a revamp of Harding Street in the Canal District.

But some developers, who are not directly benefitting from the influx of state cash and tax benefits to downtown, are skeptical that the neighborhoods will share in the wealth.

When Paul Collyer moved west from Boston to buy his first Chandler Street property in 1990, he was not impressed with what he described as a moribund commercial sector and dirty streets.

"It was literally a shithole," Collyer said. "I mean, every house here was boarded up."

But Collyer settled in, living in one Chandler Street building and buying up and renovating others. He helped form the Chandler Street Business Association and embarked on a contentious push-and-pull with City Hall, tussling over infrequent street cleanings, a lack of municipal trash cans and an influx of street-level drug use that he blamed in part on the city's efforts to push addicts and the homeless off of the Worcester Common.

"I love the diversity of my neighborhood. I just hate the filth. It drives me nuts. Trash in the streets, in the gutters," he said.

Augustus said the Chandler Street business owners had agreed under former City Manager Mike O'Brien to maintain their own trash cans, but got "overwhelmed" and began to blame the city. Petty said the city will soon release a plan to improve cleanliness across Worcester.

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Kristin Lafratta | MassLive

Collyer said he and a group of Chandler Street property owners met Augustus about six months after he took the city manager job to discuss how UMass Medical's emergency treatment center on Queen Street was affecting the neighborhood.

The relationship got off to a rocky start.

"He said this neighborhood has always been horrible, [his] grandmother lived in it," Collyer said. "Our jaws just dropped, that almost just ended the meeting."

Augustus strongly disputed Collyer's account of the conversation, saying that he was conveying his familiarity with the neighborhood's problems, not lobbing insults.

"I don't talk about neighborhoods like that," Augustus said. "What I did say is I knew that neighborhood well."

Collyer said his chief development concern is with Worcester's three-family housing stock, which he argued should be a higher priority than downtown apartment buildings seeking to lure young people from Boston.

"I've always been the proponent that good housing, attractive housing would bring people into neighborhoods, and it's true. Affordable, too," Collyer said. "Almost all of it is is bad landlords. You go into the houses, they're in very bad shape. Joe Petty wasn't making that up. Petty and I will agree on certain things -- the housing stock, three decker housing stock in the city is in horrible, horrible shape."

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Kevin Ksen, an organizer with the Worcester Community Labor Coalition and the Pleasant Street Neighborhood Network Center, also had critiques for City Hall -- but disagreed with Collyer about the real problems facing Worcester's neighborhoods.

His neighborhood organization has petitioned city government for a variety of projects over the years, from pothole and sidewalk repairs to funding for youth athletics. But, he said, attention on neighborhood concerns has waned, as the city has focused on flashy downtown developments.

"I feel like the city has shifted attention over the last couple of years. Folks at city hall don't talk about neighborhoods in the way they used to," Ksen said.

And while City Hall can be absent, developers are far from a neighborhood savior, Ksen argued, saying he would rather see assistance for first-time homeowners and strict community benefit requirements for developers who receive tax breaks than street cleaning crews.

"Covering up graffiti and doing the trash is great, but I want to see jobs for young people, help for families," Ksen said.

Ksen pointed to the long, troubled history of 1 Quincy Street, a violation-ridden building owned until recently by an absentee landlord, as evidence of the city's inattentiveness. And he said that even local developers have contributed to neighborhood blight by buying up properties and leaving them vacant and unused for years.

"When developers stretch themselves thin and they're mothballing certain projects, it's harder for me to hear their frustrations about the permitting process or whatever," Ksen said. "We do have to make sure that developers are able to do stuff here, but I haven't heard consistently that folks are having a problem."

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Kristin Lafratta | MassLive

Juan Gomez, a former Worcester City Councilor and the current head of the city's CENTRO social service agency, said he supports City Hall's downtown redevelopment plan -- but said he shares concerns about neighborhoods behing left behind.

"I think it's wise on the part of the city to invest as much time and resources as possible in trying to rehab areas of downtown. I know that there will be a long term positive contribution to the rest of the city," Gomez said. "But, you know, I believe that multiple parallel strategies should be implemented so it doesn't leave out or require that much more time for the benefits to trickle down to the neighborhoods."

CENTRO's Main Middle neighborhood is a "resource desert" with few community organizations beyond CENTRO and the YMCA, Gomez said. He said he hopes the city will support the New Americans CDC, a community development corporation created by CENTRO in 2015.

"We've seen the need to reinvest in the neighborhood and turn a lot of the properties that are empty, dilapidated, abandoned into thriving economic engines for the neighborhood," Gomez said. "Conversations are ongoing. I have full confidence we will get the support we need."

Gomez also raised concerns that the construction jobs fueled by downtown redevelopment are reaching residents of his neighborhood.

"If it has, I don't see it," Gomez said. "I don't see subcontractors of color on the jobs, I don't see those kinds of things that are critical to help sustain the people that live in the city, but I don't know."

Augustus said the city is sensitive to those concerns, but can only set local or minority hiring goals when a project involves tax incentives. For fully private development, the city has no say in who is hired.

"When we do give a TIF, there's a TIF policy that has goals for local hires, minorities, women," Augustus said.