‘People will flock here’: After pandemic-era success, Waltham debates closing off Moody Street to cars

“This is the most welcoming place I’ve ever known,” said Jonathan Paz, a 31-year-old son of Bolivian immigrants who grew up on Waltham’s south side, served on the City Council, and last year ran for mayor. “To me, this is like the United States, walking down Moody Street.”

But ever since a COVID-era experiment in outdoor dining, when the city closed the street for months at a time to help the restaurants expand capacity and weather the pandemic, there has been a roiling debate over how Moody Street should best be used. And, by extension, who it is for.

There was a point, at the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th, when Moody Street was unquestionably for everyone, said local historian Jack Cox. It was the second-largest business district in Massachusetts, the spine of a neighborhood filled with people who worked in the textile, watch, and other factories that lined the Charles River, and who came to Moody Street for their everyday needs.

“You had thousands of people working in downtown Waltham, and they’re getting their paycheck, they’re spending their money down there,” he said. “It was just a really vibrant area of Waltham for many, many years.”

But the arrival of suburban malls gutted the street and its retail anchor, Cronin’s department store, Cox said, and by the ‘80s, it had fallen into decline.

“It became pretty shady,” said Peter Richard, who grew up in Waltham in the ‘80s and ‘90s and today works in sales at Elfman’s Flooring. “It was always, ‘Don’t let me catch you on Moody Street.’”

That was around the time city officials started trying to bring it back from the brink, with a wave of revitalization and rezoning efforts and a move to block fast food restaurants and chains, said longtime council member Robert Logan.

“One of the things that we emphasized was that if you’re going to have a successful downtown, you need to have something that other downtowns don’t have,” he said.

Over time, it worked, and a restaurant scene began to flourish alongside independent nail salons, barber shops, fitness studios, and an array of immigrant-owned businesses that catered to the neighborhood’s diverse population.

Then came COVID. In a bid to help small businesses, and draw customers from their homes, city officials closed Moody Street to vehicular traffic and allowed patios to sprawl out onto the pavement. The thoroughfare became a destination, a model quickly copied by other cities throughout the region.

“Everyone was so happy, and we couldn’t have been happier,” said Caroline Mahoney, an assistant manager at the Italian restaurant Sweet Basil, which saw its business double with an additional 20 patio tables. “It felt really special.”

In summertimes since, Waltham has continued to experiment with the al fresco concept, shutting down the street for several months or on varied nights of the week. Now, the city’s studying a more permanent approach, making Moody Street one-way — either north or south — or closing it to cars entirely and creating a pedestrian mall.

Opinions are sharply mixed.

At a public meeting last month, a number of residents said they’d support widening sidewalks, slowing traffic, and converting Moody to one-way in order to make it more pedestrian friendly. Longtime resident Gary Morrison noted that the city used to shut Moody Street for “Crazy Days,” when the stores would bring their wares out on the street to sell, and has experimented with shutdowns for years. It’s time to try it for good, he said.

“Every year we kick the can down the road,” Morrison said at last month’s meeting. “Close down Moody Street, have it be a destination. People will flock here.”

Others aren’t so sure.

Mireille Balian, who owns the ChicMed Laser & Esthetic Center along the block, loved the street closures during the summer but said a move to fully pedestrianize the street year-round doesn’t make sense during New England’s winters, and might eventually force some businesses to close.

“It’s the businesses that make Moody Street popping,” Balian said. “If they don’t do well, there’s nothing to walk around and enjoy.”

And Dipak Patel, who’s run the Patel Brothers grocery shop on the block for two decades, said he’s still trying to recoup business lost during the pandemic. Even with a parking lot behind his store, he said, sales dipped precipitously during the extended street closures, and one key way customers know his store exists is by driving by.

While Patel understands that people across Waltham have opinions on what to do with Moody Street, he argues it’s the business owners whose opinions should carry the most weight.

“I’m paying rent for Moody Street, right?” he said.

He wonders why restaurants should get priority over other non-restaurant businesses. And he’s hardly alone. In a survey conducted by the city, Logan said, some 50 businesses along Moody Street responded saying they didn’t want a pedestrian street. That’s important to keep in mind, Logan said.

“Each of them knows what they need for their business to be successful,” he said. “We need to be in tune with that.”

Paz, who says he became “the face of pedestrianization,” during his unsuccessful mayoral run, counters that a citywide survey of over 500 residents last year showed about 90 percent wanted to shut down the street.

“We stumbled across a gold mine of an idea,” he said. “And it was extremely popular, even though we did the bare minimum.”

But some residents, even ones who routinely walk to Moody Street, are hesitant about pedestrianization. Matthew Frederick, an urban planner who lives just a few blocks away, said the city should tread carefully. The current study, he noted, looks mainly at traffic flow, not at the impact on Moody Street’s delicate commercial ecosystem.

“It was not an economic study. It was not a demographic study,” he said. “And making a pedestrian street is a big deal.”

The city plans another study, likely next year, of the economic impact of closing Moody Street, said City Councilor Cathyann Harris. Officials want to make sure they strike the right balance.

“We’re trying to listen,” she said, “Trying to find a middle ground here.”

So is Miriam Benitez. She’s the owner of Lizzy’s, an ice cream-scooping institution on Moody Street going back decades. Closing down the street for outdoor service was a lifesaver during the depths of the pandemic, she said, enabling customers to enjoy a treat in the relative safety of the open air.

But lately the endless uncertainty is wearing on her. The margins on ice cream aren’t big enough to justify a major investment in outdoor seating if it’s only going to last for one year, she said. And the divisions the broader debate has opened up among neighboring businesses are disappointing. Mostly, Benitez said, she’d like the city to decide once and for all what it wants to do with Moody Street.

“I like the idea of having [the street closed], but I don’t like the fact that it affects negatively the other businesses. I feel like we should look out for each other,” she said. “I’m OK either way. Whether they open it or close it, I believe that people still will eat ice cream.”

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• Framingham is reinventing itself. Again.

Janelle Nanos can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @janellenanos. Tim Logan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @bytimlogan.