Easton Town Council

14 S. Harrison Street

Easton, Maryland 21601

Dear Council members,

As a resident of Talbot County, I too am concerned about how Easton grows and where it grows. You are to be commended for adopting the moratorium on Big Box development, because it offers both Easton and the County the opportunity to more fully develop a vision together. It is extremely important-in fact a necessity-that the town and county work together, and not at cross purposes.

You need to develop and adopt a vision of what Easton-including Greater Easton-should be. The question cannot be solely about Big Box commercial businesses. Do you want Easton and Greater Easton to have numerous scattered malls or strip malls, with some residenfial development stuck in between them? Do you want large, effectively isolated, residential areas with no stores so that people must drive to do their shopping? Or, do you want to focus on development of a viable, lively town center?

My own vision is for Easton/Greater Easton to redefine its town center boundaries and that retail development should be concentrated within those boundaries. The Easton Town Center should include the area currently identified as downtown and Talbottown, plus the shops and businesses with access onto Marlboro Road. These areas are not now well integrated, leaving the shoppers with a series of disconnected malls. Nearly everyone using them drives from one to the next.

I am not an architect, but here are some ideas that could foster a greater togetherness in an expanded Easton Town Center:

• Let the town determine where large retail businesses may be established and what standards must be met, and then let new businesses bid for that space. That is, let the town control key development rather than the town constantly trying to adapt to proposals from developers.
• Allow additional stories to be built, so that larger businesses would feel welcome in the Easton Town Center. Why not allow a two-story, and perhaps a three-story retail store? This is one way you could permit some big box retail stores, but only within the defined boundaries of Easton Town Center and in compliance with defined standards.
• Extend Bay Street across Washington Street to Harrison Street and end Harrison at that junction, leaving more space for integrated shops and a greater wholeness to the Easton Town Center.
• Try to disguise the architecturally dull strip shopping look that now exists on Marlboro as much as possible. The mall with Superfresh, for example, could build small and architecturally appealing stores flush with the sidewalk beside the street, with the new stores sharing walls, creating an intimate and pedestrian-friendly atmosphere.
• Design the new small stores architecturally to continue the mood of the "old" town center.
• Put additional parking in back of the stores located in the strip malls wherever possible. Buy property to do so, if necessary.
• Build sidewalks to connect all parts of the Easton Town Center for the pedestrian. Make the area VERY pedestrian-friendly in every way.
• Make it easy for the pedestrian to walk across all the streets in the Easton Town Center (including Goldsborough and Harrison!), with indicators for pedestrians on all traffic lights and clearly designated crosswalks for the pedestrians, and easily visible to those in vehicles.
• Make street lighting architecturally similar and in place along the sidewalks throughout the entire Easton Town Center.
• Provide a shuttle bus throughout the Easton Town Center area. Keep the use fee low; e.g., between ten and twenty-five cents, in order to keep use of the shuttle up and more cars in the parking lots.

In other words, build inward and make Easton Town Center a more inviting and friendly place for people.

Two examples come to mind that we have seen where towns have made it possible for the "old" town center to become a more lively and expanded center. In Rutland, Vermont, the Walmart store (and a few others beside it) is across the street from the "old" downtown and was built to design standards that architecturally integrate it to the area (not a blue and gray big box). Walmart's parking lot also provides additional parking for the rest of the town. In Manchester, Vermont, the "old" town center is integrated in a pedestrian-friendly manner with some new and charming small shops hiding small strip malls. The parking lots are broken up by fences and plantings, yet still seem to leave sufficient parking spaces. These expanded town centers are easily accessible by the cars coming to shop and for the people who have actually parked their cars and walked from store to store.

In sum, I would support Big Box development only in a designated Easton Town Center and only if strict requirements are established in both county and Easton ordinances. And, further, the Easton Town Center should be in its center, not out on the highway.

Sincerely yours,

 Barbara M. Coit