Here’s a novel idea in an era of cash-strapped cities and jobs-focused colleges: Let the local college buy up some of the local streets! It’s happening in Providence.
Exhibit A: a stretch of Huxley Street, part of Providence College’s $3.8 million acquisition:
The college says owning the street will facilitate construction of a new entryway and renovations to the future home of the school of business, as well as athletic-field relocations … No mention of whether the telephone lines will be buried.
Does Providence College have a civil engineering program? If so, the students can learn how to tear up streets, upgrade sewers, and so on. Why not a one-credit summer-session course on filling potholes?
Providence College is a Catholic school, so we immediately thought of the obvious road for St. Michael’s to take over: Vermont 15. Anything St. Mike’s does to that sorry highway would be an improvement. But why stop there?
We wouldn’t mind seeing UVM buy Colchester Avenue, but of course that won’t happen. UVM doesn’t have the money, and besides, it’s an instrumentality of the state. The legal fees necessary to arrange the sale would probably exceed the purchase price.
The only college that would seem to have the wherewithal – and the chutzpah — to buy up local streets is Champlain College, which has already put its own parking regulations in force for its own employees on several municipal streets that run through campus. …
How much do you suppose the city of Burlington would ask for three blocks of South Willard or two blocks of Maple? Enough to bail out Burlington Telecom?
