Apr 24, 2008

Wrong turn on Moody StreetBy Stephanie V. SiekBoston.com

These are awkward times for Moody Street, the main thoroughfare that just a decade ago was hailed as the face of Waltham’s rebirth from factory town to hipster suburb.

On April 12, the Construction Site, a children’s store that served as one of the street’s retail destination points, closed. The wonderland window displays of wooden toys that once greeted shoppers who crossed the bridge over the Charles River into Moody Street’s heart are no more. And the Construction Site is not the only independent enterprise to leave the street in recent months.

The past year has also seen the departure of Maxima Gift Center, Harry’s Shoe Store, Brickman’s Furniture, and Lexington Music Center.

And Back Pages Books, heralded when it opened in 2005 as the city’s first bookstore in 15 years, was recently forced to appeal to its patrons to recoup money lost when city permitting delays held up its reopening in a new space for longer than a month.

The loss of the Construction Site and other distinctive retail shops demonstrates a persistent problem on Moody Street – the difficulty in maintaining the kinds of businesses needed for a vibrant commercial strip, one that draws pedestrian crowds, business leaders say.

In interviews, merchants said several factors hamper the street’s retail climate: A lack of unity and cooperation among business owners, the absence of an overarching plan for encouraging shopping and business in the downtown area, slow foot traffic during the day, a lack of parking in the evenings, complicated city permitting processes, the loss of large anchor stores such as Jordan’s Furniture (which left Moody Street in 2004), and not enough affluent shoppers interested in buying higher-end products.

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