WORCESTER - Despite recent talk of renaissance, redevelopment and revitalization, there are college students who are afraid or have no desire to go downtown Worcester, would rather go to Boston on the weekends, and feel that even if they did venture downtown here, there’s very little for them to do .

And despite the close grouping of colleges near downtown (including Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University, downtown; Worcester Polytechnic Institute, just over a mile away from City Hall; Clark University, less than 1.5 miles away; and the College of the Holy Cross, less than three miles away), the city’s colleges overall mostly keep to themselves.

Clark junior Ruth Fuller, 20, of Falmouth, and senior Zoë DeGrazio, 21, of Silver Spring, Maryland, live off-campus.

While the college administration encourages students to go out into the city, Ms. Fuller and Ms. DeGrazio said they also tell students to use the school's Student Safety Escort Service. Several other Worcester colleges offer a similar service.

Both women said they usually don’t walk alone at night or venture into the nearby neighborhood because of fear.

“I’ve gone on runs in the neighborhood,” Ms. DeGrazio said. “Sometimes, I get catcalled. Unfortunately, that’s the reality of this place right now.”

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Ms. Fuller is a SSES driver.

“Driving escort at night, I see a lot of people asking for money, people on drugs, prostitutes, so much so that I carry granola bars with me wherever I go,” Ms. Fuller added. "So when people ask me for money I have something I could give them.”

John L. Foley, vice president of government and community affairs at Clark, said the college administration encourages students to try different restaurants and stores in the neighborhood.

As far as safety is concerned, he said Clark students can walk in groups and feel pretty comfortable. And Main South has gotten so much better, he said.

However, Mr. Foley said Worcester certainly has an opioid addiction problem that sometimes manifests itself on the streets.

Clark seniors Krishna Raj Naithoni, 23, of Barrington, Rhode Island, and Khanh Derek Do, 21, originally from Hanoi, Vietnam, and currently of Boston, both live off-campus and usually go to Boston on the weekends.

“I would rather go to Boston than stay put in Worcester because there is more to do in Boston,” Mr. Naithoni said.

Clark senior Olivia Schwartz, 22, of Cincinnati, lives off-campus and also has a car. On the weekend, she said she will often go to Portland, Maine, Northampton or Boston.

All five Clark students agree that Park Avenue is a popular destination for Clarkies.

Ms. Fuller and Ms. Schwartz both have been at City Hall once (to protest President Trump’s ban on Muslins and for gun control ban, respectively) and the Common once (volunteering for "Keep Worcester Warm" and seeing a jazz festival, respectively).

All five Clark students agree that there isn't enough engaging activities for college students and there should be more engagement between the Worcester colleges also.

“I’ve been in Worcester for four years and I don’t know one Holy Cross student and I think it’s so strange because Holy Cross is, literally, a 10-minute drive,” Ms. Schwartz said. “I feel that there should be more events where we can meet each other.”

According to a survey of the Worcester Student Government Association released in January 2018, more than 45 percent of the city's college students do not attend events off-campus and the majority (69 percent) stay on their campuses most of the time. According to the WSGA survey, 35 percent do not feel safe in Worcester, while only 29 percent do. The WSGA hasn't taken another survey since.

"I can’t say if we’ve moved the needle yet or anything," Ms. Pelletier said. "But I do know that this is something that the Chamber (of Commerce), WSGA, Discover Central Massachusetts and the city are investing in year after year."

City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr. said the City has worked hard with the Worcester Police Department to make Worcester one of the safest cities of its size in the northeast.

“Nearly all measures of crime are on the decline thanks to community policing strategies which concentrate on preventing crime and eliminating the atmosphere of fear it creates,” Mr. Augustus said. “One such strategy was the installation of a new downtown police precinct at Union Station in March 2018 which deploys patrols of the Common, Worcester Public Library, City Hall and Union Station.”

In addition, Mr. Augustus said Worcester’s downtown has further been enhanced by the increasing presence of college students from MCPHS University, Becker College, Quinsigamond Community College and Worcester State University who now live or take classes here.

Furthermore, Mr. Augustus said these efforts will be strengthened by the establishment of a downtown Business Improvement District this year, which will include staff members actively serving as ambassadors and engaging with the community right within the core of our city.

WSGA president and WPI senior Michael Brooks, 22, of Newport News, Virginia, lives off-campus. Despite the WSGA survey results, Mr. Brooks said there has been a lot more student engagement in downtown in the last couple of years.

“College kids can be hard to entertain at times,” Mr. Brooks said. “A lot of us like food quite a lot. And Worcester has an absolutely fantastic spread of food developing every day.”

Many of the college students interviewed said they have never been to The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts, the Palladium, City Hall or the Common, and roughly about half said they have never been to the DCU Center.

Holy Cross freshmen Micah White, 19, of Andover, and Elisheva Duwell, 18, of Atlanta, live in the dorms.

Ms. White said she has only left campus one time and that was to go to a nearby Walmart.

Ms. Duwell is a little more adventurous. In addition to Walmart, she said she and her friends have gone to Target, the BirchTree Bread Company and Leitrim's Pub on Park Avenue. She said she would have to know more about what downtown has to offer before wanting to go there.

To better engage college students, Stephanie Ramey, executive director of Discover Central Massachusetts, said they recently launched an app and widget to show what Worcester has to offer.

At least once per year, Discover Central Massachusetts also teams up with the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce for a college staff familiarization tour of the city, as well as attend student orientations and open houses at the area colleges.

Sandy Dunn, general manager of the DCU Center, said they have met with the college student activities committees and regularly post on social media and send mailers when the arena has an event that might appeal to the colleges.

Also at the DCU Center, the Worcester Railers hosted its first ever “College Night” in November and, with 4,049 in attendance, it was considered a huge success.

“College students know when what they want to see is here,” Ms. Dunn said. “So it’s not so much the ever-elusive college crowd - how do we get them downtown? They’re going to come down when there’s something that they want to come down for. And they’re not going to come if it’s just we want them to come.”

Kimberly Carter, marketing assistant at the Palladium, said the concert hall reaches out to the colleges to offer the chance for them to buy blocks of tickets to sell to their students, as well as offer colleges a chance to host shows at the Palladium rather than on campus.

In addition, Ms. Carter said a lot of the electronic dance music events have been bringing in more college-age students.

Through Worcester Art Museum’s Institutional Membership program, students from many of the colleges in Worcester enjoy free admission when they present a valid college ID, Julieane K. Frost, senior marketing manager at the museum, said.

In addition, the museum’s curatorial department meets twice a year with academic representatives from the local colleges and the museum hosts a faculty night.

Ms. Frost said the museum's outreach efforts are paying off.

"Our institutional membership program is growing, and we see many local college students visiting," Ms. Frost said. Many students in the city take advantage of their free membership and enjoy the exhibitions and programs WAM offers.

The Hanover Theatre offers $20 student rush tickets for Broadway shows and membership in its “Premiere Club” for young professionals. But what the Hanover has found to be its most successful outreach to the colleges is its internship program, Lisa Condit, director of marketing and public relations, said.

“We have found that building those relationships where college students, who are in either marketing or business, coming in and working with us on a regular basis has really helped to foster that awareness,” Ms. Condit said, “because it’s all word of mouth and then they bring that back to the college community."

MCPHS grad student Megan Lusignan, 23, of Tiverton, Rhode Island, lives off-campus.

In addition to studying and attending classes, Ms. Lusignan said she and her college friends only go out to eat at places that include The Boynton Restaurant & Spirits, 119 Highland St., which is also a big WPI hangout, as well as The Fix Burger Bar, 108 Grove St., and various eating establishments on Shrewsbury Street.

Despite MCPHS being downtown, Ms. Lusignan said she doesn’t travel farther than a few blocks from campus because she has been told numerous times that downtown isn't safe.

“We were all told by multiple staff and faculty of MCPHS during our orientation that it wasn't safe to travel further from school than City Hall,” Ms. Lusignan said. “We were told this during both orientation and during our walking tour, which was done by upper-year students. The security officers in the building also send out reminders, occasionally, to avoid walking around the city and not to travel past City Hall.”

Ms. Lusignan said panhandlers and catcalls are a common occurrence.

“As a young woman with mostly female friends, I don't know anyone who has not had rude and uncomfortable comments made at us as we walk down the street,” Ms. Lusignan said. “It just makes you generally too afraid to walk near them, so you try to avoid the situation, especially at night.”

If her friends go to a movie, they drive to Blackstone Valley 14: Cinema de Lux in Millbury, Ms. Lusignan said. On the weekends, they generally leave the city and go either to The Shoppes at Blackstone Valley in Millbury or somewhere in Boston.

MCPHS post baccalaureate student Jessica Duncan, 22, of Robesonia, Pennsylvania, lives off-campus.

Besides college, Ms. Duncan said all she and her friends do is “eat, eat and eat, because there isn’t much else to do."

Ms. Duncan said they usually go to coffee shops such as Fuel America on Mercantile Street (which became a big MCPHS hangout as soon as it opened), BirchTree Bread Company on Green Street and Brew on the Grid on Franklin Street; restaurants like The Fix and Maddi's Cookery + TapHouse, both on Water Street, Brew City Grill & Brew House and Flying Rhino; and breweries like Wormtown Brewery, all on Shrewsbury Street.

“We try to go to new places every time,” Ms. Duncan said. “If this city has anything, it’s good food.”

Ms. Duncan said downtown Worcester could use a Target and a movie theater.

“I don’t go to hookah bars or anywhere past the Worcester Common area,” she said. “Beyond the Grid District is a bit scary.”

MCPHS grad student Heather LaVallee, 24, of Denville, New Jersey, lives in the dorm. She said she and her friends never go past the Skymark Tower Apartments at 600 Main St.

Evan Maloney, assistant dean of students at MCPHS, said that the university isn't telling students that the city is not safe.

“We don’t have any dining hall on campus, so we’re encouraging our students to get out into the city and try the new restaurants," Mr. Maloney said. "We had a half a dozen new restaurants open downtown in the last couple of months. So I think we really try to get them to go out there, explore, see a lot of these great places that gives Worcester so much character.”

While it’s the college's job to make sure their students are safe and informed, Heather L. Pelletier, vice president of operation, director of education and workforce development at the Chamber of Commerce, insists the city is safe, and the notion that it’s unsafe is merely a perception issue. She said the resurfacing on Main Street might change that perception, especially for the MCPHS students who are walking the streets of downtown already.

“Worcester might feel dirty or unsafe,” Ms. Pelletier said. “But once it’s all new and fresh and clean, they’ll have a different sort of psychological experience when they are walking around.”

As for their being not enough for college students to do, Ms. Pelletier said they’re trying to build a “walkable experience" downtown.

“I will say there has been much focus on the hotels and the housing and then that next frontier that we are really hoping for is retail,” Ms. Pelletier said. “What we have been hearing from experts is that retail isn’t the first thing to enter a market.”

Holy Cross senior Jeffrey Dickinson, 21, of Cheshire, Connecticut, lives in the dorms. He likes to go to area bowling alleys, occasionally bars, The Shoppes at Blackstone Valley, the Worcester Art Museum and various restaurants on Shrewsbury Street.

Holy Cross junior Maggie Flaherty, 22, of Medford, also lives in the dorms. She also said she only goes shopping at malls outside of Worcester.

“We often go to Blackstone Valley because there’s so much to offer,” Ms. Flaherty said. “We could go to Target, the movies, go shopping and get food, all in one trip.”

This story has been updated from an earlier version with a comment from City Manager Augustus.