By Josh Resnek
When the old collides with the new, when a new generation sweeps into the city and the old generation hangs on but is left behind, there is a great deal of irony that comes to pass.
Such is the case on Elm Street, perhaps one of Everett’s foremost ugly and polluted industrial corners, a back water of sorts off the Parkway where nothing happened there for the last 50 years.
It remains a cornucopia of empty lots strewn with everything from tires to rotted out automobiles, junk and the bric brac of a dozen small, generally dirty commercial businesses still operating in the area.
The grand new apartment development sits amidst this sea of nothingness.
The many new tenants who are going to be moving into the development will have all that to look out at, to wonder, do I have to pay $2500-$3000 a month to look at a pile of used tires in a trash strewn area lined with ugly industrial sites?
The city has not yet mastered the trick of zoning out the bad to make way for something totally new.
At the very least, the city should require taller evergreens to be planted in close to one another in long rows to block out the sight of the industrial side of Elm Street.
Would that help?
Yes it would.
In fact, there should be heavy plantings of trees everywhere around the sight to insulate it from the mountain of traffic flowing up and down the Revere Beach Parkway.
All the new developments should be heavily planted with more mature trees, the way Encore redid their site.
The lesson learned about how to refurbish polluted land as Encore did is a textbook study of how things must be done here.