FROM THE STAR LEDGER (Newhouse Newspapers)
Sunday, August 20, 2006
With key arteries under repair, residents feel the stress
BY CLAIRE HEININGER
Star-Ledger Staff
As a massage therapist, Cecelia Wargaski is accustomed to feeling her clients' tension from their shoulder blades to their shins. But she's never seen Clinton like this.
"People are just stressed, and I hear a lot about it," Wargaski said as she left work one day last week. "I guess you could say that I'm right in the commotion."
Perched above a Main Street storefront in downtown Clinton, her office sits near the center of a town antsy to finish one face-lift and get on with another. Adored by visitors as a business and scenic pulse of Hunterdon County, overlooked by drivers as a convenient commuter shortcut, the 1.4-mile town is currently neither as it copes with simultaneous construction projects that put its own am bitions on hold.
With two bridges and the main highway exit leading into a town under repair -- and one of the bridges closed to car traffic entirely -- Clinton residents and merchants feeling the strain can do little but watch and wait.
And plan their rebound.
"I think we're past the worst of it, but it doesn't mean we don't have a long way to go," Mayor Christine Schaumburg said last week. "People move out here for a certain quality of life, and Clinton's very fortunate because we do serve as the town center for a lot of townships that don't have a town center.
"I think we can do a better job of offering them more to stop for."
That could include everything from historic touches such as benches and street signs to new development that would ease the tax burden without resorting to big-box stores, Shaumburg said. A preliminary streetscape plan finished this month presents short- term ways to make the town more pedestrian-friendly, and a visioning study set to begin this fall will take a comprehensive look at Clinton's long-term economic, traffic and preservation future.
"That would look at land uses that are more sympathetic to bolstering historic character, and to improving businesses downtown, and general livability," town planner Carl Hintz said, adding that despite receiving some state grants, the town is still seeking more funding to move the projects forward. "You want pedestrians to feel safer in the environment there."
Clinton can't give its full attention to the future, however, until it's free of current construction distractions. Work to replace the intersection nearest Exit 15 of Route 78 -- whose hazards forced the state to close the exit for two weeks earlier this summer -- is ongoing, including repairs to the Old Route 22 bridge. That project, which involves the town's major cross-state highway artery, is on track to be completed by December, said Erin Phalon, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation. At the same time, work by the county has shut the Halstead Street bridge through February.
"The town's opinion is to ac commodate both the county and the state as quick as possible," Schaumburg said. "I really do be lieve everyone is working as hard as they can to get this done, and I think bending over backward to get this done, but I think they've hit some huge obstacles. There isn't a good spin on that, there just isn't."
That hasn't stopped downtown merchants from trying. Anticipat ing the days without street barriers and construction cones is the only way to make the current loss of customers bearable, several business owners said last week.
"You've just got to keep working at it," A. Harvey Finkel, owner of the Clinton Book Shop, said as a handful of customers browsed the store Wednesday afternoon. Sales have dipped this summer, Finkel said, leading him and other members of the town's business guild to scramble with e-mails and fliers to tell customers they're still accessible.
"When people hear 'this bridge is closed, that bridge is closed,' they think the town is closed," Fin kel said. "You think they would've coordinated it better so it wouldn't all happen at once."
Residents are also losing patience.
"This has been a bad year. Route 78 is getting worse instead of better," said Carolyn Grosso, who has lived in Clinton for six years. She and her husband have both tweaked their commutes because of the changes. "We go past there all the time, and it doesn't look like they're doing anything. It doesn't look like anything's changed."
Still, Grosso said, those loyal to the town will tolerate the inconvenience for the eventual payoff.
"It's a nightmare, it really is a nightmare," said John Palladino, a resident and owner of the JJ Scoops ice cream parlor, "but we'll bounce back."