Back to Wormtown

I left Worcester with a part of it still in me. Now part of me has returned.

Worcester’s eponymous diner as it looked in 1994. Still looks pretty much the same.

When I announced my decision to leave Worcester in 2002, Brian Goslow, a friend, life-long Worcester resident, and scholar of all-things-Wormtown, asked me to pen a farewell to my home of the past nine years for his popular blog. 

I did, but neither of us were happy with the results. Maybe I needed more time away from the city. Maybe I just had the move on my mind. Maybe I was still too pissed at Worcester Publishing for not hiring me. Either way, I left with some reluctance. I had a great apartment large enough to accommodate Louise and a future baby, and dirt cheap rent, but I sensed that perhaps Worcester didn’t want me. 

Wrecking balls were a common sight on Main Street in those days.

Living in Massachusetts all my life, I rarely heard anything about Worcester that sparked any desire to move there. The diners changed that. When I came to town, the city had twelve still in operation. Visiting these led me to many other treasures one completely misses from the car window speeding along the I-290 beltway. As it bisects its industrial and commercial heart, one mostly sees a hollowing city of half-occupied nineteenth-century mill buildings and hills covered with charmless, vinyl-clad triple deckers. 

In fact, Worcester had more than its share of local attractions, but finding them in the pre-internet era required some work.

Worcester or Wormtown: You Decide

Worcester was a whole city of cheap eats where one could dine around the world without leaving city limits. Worcester was, and still is, New England’s diner capital, albeit with diminished numbers since my departure. The nightlife was sparse, but if you haven’t seen a show at Ralph’s Chadwick Square Diner, then you haven’t truly rocked. When Vincent’s opened in 1997, Worcester became the home of the swankiest cocktail bar in the commonwealth.

Few of these attractions existed within walking distance of each other. Worcester lacked a walkable district with critical mass or discernible charm. Worcester has six colleges that collectively bring in 35,000 students, but no one would mistake it for a college town. All the fun stuff that young single people preferred was dispersed around the city, None of its many traditional neighborhoods — not even downtown — offered much reason to spend a day or even an afternoon or evening of walking around, shopping and dining. The density such places need to attract pedestrian traffic gave way to parking lots.  

A very small sampling of the grand homes gracing Worcester’s better neighborhoods.

The city and its people offered no shortage of solutions for Worcester’s comeback, but City Hall fumbled along with vague hopes of attracting some type of savior. It touted itself as an All-America City award winner, with its biotech office park, a renovated but little-used airport, and a new hospital complex in the heart of its commercial district, but it kept shooting itself in the foot as it ignored or added to the burdens of businesses who toughed out these hard times. 

The city accomplished one grand achievement before I left. Union Station’s restoration and return to active service finally ended twenty-six years of decay. The city celebrated with a formal ball where for a single night in 1999, the preservation community could claim a huge win and renewed hopes for its future.

The Preservation Ball held in the freshly restored Grand Hall at Union Station in 1999.

Even that came with some further frustrations. Initially, the MBTA offered a paltry schedule of trains to Boston. While this would improve, a station that once processed three million passengers per year processes 17% of that today. To help stem operating deficits, the city often rents out the grand hall for functions.

I left my kid in Wormtown

Though I left it, Worcester never really left me. I kept in touch with people there. I followed its progress online. I occasionally returned to see friends. With each return trip, I never felt like I was missing anything, except perhaps the sublime martini and meatball sandwich at Vincent’s and the corned beef hash and lively conversation at Charlie’s Diner.

Without question, the greatest cocktail lounge I ever visited.

Two major developments sparked hope. Proving wrong all those who laughed at my suggestion to tear down the mall to revive downtown, developers did indeed tear down the mall and restored the street grid to its historic alignments. 

Then the city finally got its minor league baseball team, and not just any team. It managed to uproot the Red Sox triple-A franchise from its home in Pawtucket, Rhode Island after 47 years. No matter that its ownership had the money to build this project with change between its collective couch cushions, the taxpayers coughed up millions to get the deal done.

Downtown got more apartments and office space, and the Canal District got its stadium and with it all came more coffee shops, brewpubs, distilleries, and bistros than you can swing a bat at. When I took my daughter on the tour, I saw restaurants in buildings I thought would see a wrecking ball long before an espresso machine. 

It took some time, but Worcester finally got yanked into the 21st century — for better or for worse. It now had sections that I barely recognized from my last days there. 

Despite this, some things have not progressed at all. Worcester still depends upon the state to cover half its operating budget, just as it did when I lived there. Not all of the areas have benefitted, including Main South, which encompasses Clark, which adds to my worries about my daughter.

I don’t mean to sound obtuse, but when friends congratulated us after moving Cecelia into her dorm, I hardly felt like celebrating. It felt more like failure. It deeply concerns me that this whole debt-fueled scheme has become a bloated, corrupted enterprise that sells punishingly expensive degrees with an ROI only slightly better than a high-stakes blackjack game.

I hope that this kid who drove her parents to madness with her stubborn and skeptical nature stays true to herself. Those traits will fit in well in a city like Worcester and whatever its Wormtown scene looks like today. More importantly, I hope they guide her through some of the most challenging and rewarding years that lay before her.

Take care of my kid, Wormtown. I’ll be back soon to check up on both you!

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