Belmont Center Parking Meters Back In Operation Beginning Friday

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Photo: Inactive no longer as parking stations will be activated on Friday in Belmont Center.

The days of free parking throughout Belmont Center will come to an end beginning Friday, July 17, after a vote by the Belmont Select Board at its remote meeting on Monday.

“It’s a return to normality,” said Board Chair Roy Epstein as the members voted unanimously to honor an “explicit” request by the Belmont Center Business Association to reactivate the pay stations for parking spaces on Leonard Street, Moore Street, Alexander Avenue and Channing Road.

The ask from the business group came after their members observed many of the spaces being used by people leaving their vehicles all-day at prime locations. Paid parking in Belmont Center was suspended along the street and in the Claflin Municipal Parking Lot behind the center as a way to help merchants during the slow down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Board also decided to keep free parking in the Claflin lot through Labor Day.

New MBTA Hybrid Buses Arrive In Belmont Center With New Stops

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Photo: A new hybrid Xcelsior MBTA bus in Belmont Center

In the past two weeks, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has introduced its new fleet of hybrid buses on routes coming into Belmont. And as a result, long-standing stops in Belmont Center has been replaced due to the size of the new vehicles.

The new Xcelsior manufactured by New Flyer of America brings a better ride for commuters with greater fuel efficiency, according to the MBTA. But due to its higher profile, the buses could not pass through the tunnel over the Belmont Center commuter rail station.

The result has been a new stop impacting routes 75 and 74. are now on Concord Avenue adjacent to the First Church in Belmont, Unitarian Universalist.

The new route from Cambridge requires the buses to continue on Concord Avenue rather than make a right-hand turn through the tunnel, loop around the WWI Memorial, and take a left onto Common Street and back towards Cambridge.

Belmont Farmers Market, July 2: Load Up For The Fourth

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Photo: Belmont Farmers Market

It is another great Market Day – sunny and toasty – in Belmont as the Farmers’ Market is open in the Claflin Street parking lot in the rear of Belmont Center.

The market is open from 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, changes have been made to shopping run the market include social distancing, preordering when possible, masks and hand washing. We have a one-way path through a larger Market area. We have eliminated social events to reduce crowding. Read our Covid-19 safety rules for you, for us, and for the vendors.

Read all of our pandemic safety rules
Read all of our pandemic safety rules
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Food assistance We match government benefits to help all families take home great, local food: SNAP (Food Stamps), P-EBT (for school-aged children during the pandemic), FMNP (for moms & babies, and for seniors). Most of our produce vendors accept HIP, which adds free produce for SNAP recipients.

This week’s vendors include:

Produce
• C&M Farm
• Dick’s Market Garden

• Hutchins Farm
• Neighbor’s Acre microgreens
• Joyberry Farm mushrooms

Meat, fish & dairy
• Lilac Hedge Farm
• Hooked Fish Shop w/Red’s Best fish & Boston Smoked Fish

Bread, pastry & sweets
• Mariposa Bakery pastries & bread.

Prepared foods
• Tex Mex Eats tamales.

And more
• A Seasoned Chef Spice Blends
• House Bear Brewing
• Flores de Cafe

Leonard Street Altered To One Way Traffic At Behest Of Belmont Center Businesses

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Photo: Traffic and parking has returned to Belmont Center.

One week after Leonard Street in Belmont Center was shut down for the summer, drivers today – Thursday, June 18 – discovered the street now allows one-way traffic through Belmont’s business hub after town officials implemented a traffic plan from business owners that they hope will help retail shops as well as restaurants that have been closed for the past three months due to COVID-19.

The change comes four days after businesses expressed their concerns to the Select Board on Monday, June 15.

Starting today, traffic from Pleasant Street can travel through the center to the commuter rail tunnel. Vehicles can also use the parking spaces along Leonard Street. Jersey barriers are used to create bump-outs into the street to allow outside dining and seating for three eateries – rancatore’s ice cream & yogurt, il Casale and El Centro – along the western side of the street.

Vehicles traveling from the tunnel towards the Center will need to detour at Moore Street as the street to Alexander Avenue is closed to accommodate outdoor dining and retail space.

Town officials said the change to the street is an effort to follow through with the concerns of the town’s business leaders.

“The Town was eager to be responsive to the merchants in Belmont Center,” said Patrice Garvin, town administrator.

“We hoped the first plan would be received well, but we quickly realized we needed to give the merchants and patrons more flexibility. We implemented the current plan and will be monitoring its progress,” said Garvin.

Retailers said they were happy that the town took quick action on what they felt was a workable compromise that will assist all businesses in the center.

“I expected that they would move quickly because there were so many people that weren’t happy,” said Lisa Castagno, owner of Revolve who helped generate a response to the initial plan.

Gerry Dickhaut, owner of Champions Sporting Goods and president of the Belmont Center Business Association, said the group used a portion of the $4,600 raised from businesses and landlords to rent the jersey barriers along the street to create a safety border between vehicles and customers and employees. It will use the remaining funds to beautify the barricades and bring in live music to the newly pedestrian street.

“I’ve got to tell you the Select Board, [Garvin], Glenn Clancy [town engineer] and Mike Santoro [director of the DPW’s Highway Department] all have been so helpful to get this going. It took just a week from when we approach them for the compromise to be in place. We all worked together and got it done.”

Town To Take Second Look On Closing Leonard As Stores Seek Compromise

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Photo: Lauren Castagno, manager at Revolve Boutiques on Pleasant Street.

Laura Castagno said she had growing hope the first-week Revolve Boutiques in Belmont Center was reopened would get increasingly busy after three months being locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve been open since the first day we were able to open on Monday [June 8]” and customers were coming back to the store, said the manager of the Leonard Street consignment store.

But on Thursday morning, June 10, as she and other retailers were opening their doors, DPW trucks were outside their shops delivering crowd control barriers and earthmovers had placed jersey barriers at either end of the street to block traffic from entering.

By 11:30 a.m., the roadway through Belmont’s largest commercial district was closed to all traffic until Labor Day. The only exceptions: MBTA buses and emergency vehicles.

Since then, Castagno has seen the town’s business center grind to a halt.

“I’ve never seen Belmont Center in the morning as quiet as it has been for the last few days” as the lack of foot traffic had “significantly reduced sales,” she said.

The shutting down of the Center’s main thoroughfare was approved three days earlier by the Belmont Select Board in an effort to assist the town’s restaurants with alfresco dining after Gov. Charlie Baker approved outdoor service as the state slowly begins reopening from the economic standstill caused by the coronavirus.

The only information she and her commercial colleagues received on the closing was “via an email for the Belmont Center Business Association, but that didn’t provide all the details,” said Castagno, daughter of Lisa Castagno who owns Revolve stores in Winchester, Lexington, Newton, two in Belmont and one on Boston’s Newbury Street.

“We were just a little bit disheartened with the decision to close Leonard Street … with minimal consulting of retail businesses,” said Castagno. “We feel that that didn’t really happen in Belmont so we’re a little bit upset about that,” she said.

It was that concern that Castagno and her mother joined several fellow retailers on the Select Board’s Monday, June 15, Zoom meeting as the town was scheduled to review the new setup for Belmont Center.

Deran Muckjian, the owner of The Toy Shop of Belmont on Leonard Street, spoke for the center’s business association members saying many of their customers are unwilling to park in the Claflin Street lot behind the shops and trek around the buildings – there is no direct cut through from the lot to the Center – while seniors with mobility issues require on-street and handicap parking close to the shops they patronize.

“Retail these days is really about the experience, the actual shopping in the store and it’s also about the convenience,” Castagno said.

Castagno said Belmont’s traffic plan is similar to Waltham’s layout for Moody Street that relies on the street being closed. Yet the two locations are quite different as Waltham is “very restaurant heavy center and so that’s why people go there. So I understand a 24/7 closure there [but] I think a modified closure would be what’s best” along Leonard Street, she said.

She points to Winchester, where she managed one of the company’s operations, where all sides appeared to be heard. There, the main business district is closed from 5 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and all day on Sunday, allowing the restaurants to bring their tables and chairs out for the afternoon and night service. And parking is allowed all day from Monday to Wednesday.

With the Winchester plan in hand, Castagno said the center’s business owners meet on Friday, to layout their own blueprint for the street. The proposal, approved by a 19-7 vote, would make Leonard Street one way going north to south from the fire station to the commuter bridge. Barriers would remain on the eastern side of Leonard where most of the Center’s restaurants are located.

The western side of Leonard would allow on-street parking while the only barriers would be in front of il Casale and El Centro restaurants to allow tables to be placed on the sidewalk and in the street.

After hearing the difficulties store owners are facing, town officials are taking a second look at the layout with an eye on a possible compromise that will allow some parking and traffic to return to Leonard Street.

And while it appears the business association’s proposal is doable, Town Administrator Patrice Garvin said there are two caveats facing any change to the status quo. The first is safety. According to Glenn Clancy, director of Community Development, the inclusion of an active roadway adjacent to diners will require far more stringent barriers to separate the two on Leonard Street.

The second is money. “The cost is going to be directly related to any public safety measures,” said Garvin. After an initial consultation with Belmont Police Chief James MacIsaac, Garvin said it appears the only option to address keeping everyone safe is installing concrete jersey barriers, a far less aesthetic measure, even if you can find them at a reasonable cost.

Garvin noted the town’s fiscal 2021 budget had been cut by $5 million due to COVID-19 reductions in state and local revenue receipts.

“[The town] won’t have the DPW that would have the ability to break down or set up anything during the day and necessarily don’t have the ability to purchase the barriers that we would need to make it so that the public was safe,” said Garvin.

But business leaders such as Lee Gaston, owner of Bessie Blue, a clothing store at the southern end of the center, believe once the plan is fleshed out and presented, the retail and restaurant owners will step up with money already pledged to both make their plan workable, safe and appealing to the public.

The town and business association will be meeting this week to create a plan and present it to public safety for review and to Community Development on the final price tag. It will come before the board at its next meeting in June.

For Castagno, “[t]he businesses in the center of town are like a team. And so what we need to find a decision that’s best for everyone. We feel like the decision that’s made right now doesn’t really strike the best compromise for both the restaurants and the retailers.”

What To Know When Eating Out(side) In Belmont

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Photo: Tables and chairs are ready for customers.

As more restaurants receive permits to serve outdoor meals, Belmont resident will have the chance to go out for a meal for the first time in three months. And there is a lot new for diners and eateries to know before servers approach their customers.

The most recognizable change is taking place in Belmont Center where the greatest concentration of eateries in town are located. The Select Board Monday, June 8 approved a plan to close Leonard Street between Moore Street and Alexander Avenue to increase outdoor seating areas for restaurants adversely impacted by the COVID-19 shutdown. Leonard Street will remain closed to all through traffic, with the exception of a 15-foot center lane to allow for the passage of emergency vehicles, delivery trucks,and MBTA buses, from June 11 until Sept. 8.

Restaurants in other locations will also be provided the opportunity to have outdoor seating on the sidewalks outside their establishments.

Below is a list of basic safety standards that restaurants must comply with in order to provide dining services at outdoor seating areas.

  • Tables must be positioned to maintain at least a 6-foot distance from all other tables and any high foot traffic areas. Tables may be positioned closer together if they are separated by protective/nonporous barriers (i.e. structural walls or plexiglass dividers).
  • The size of a party seated at a table cannot exceed six people.
  • Customers are encouraged to call ahead to make dining reservations before arriving to a restaurant.
  • All customers and workers are required to wear face coverings at all times, except when eating or if an individual is unable to wear a face covering due to a medical condition or disability.
  • All workers must wash hands frequently, and table servers must wash their hands or apply hand sanitizer between each table interaction.
  • Condiments and similar products (i.e. salt, pepper, ketchup, etc.) should not be pre-set on tables and should instead be provided upon request either in single-serving portions(i.e. individual packets) or in serving containers that are sanitized between each use.
  • Menus must be one of the following: 1) paper, single-use menus disposed of after each use, 2) displayed menu (i.e. digital, whiteboard, chalkboard, etc.), or 3) electronic menus viewed on customers’ phones/mobile devices.
  • Utensils and place settings must be either single-use or sanitized after each use; utensils should be rolled or packaged. Tables should not be pre-set to reduce opportunity for exposure.
  • Tables and chairs must be cleaned and sanitized thoroughly between each seating.

The Summer Of Al Fresco: Belmont Closes Leonard Street To Help Eateries Recover [VIDEO]

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Photo: Work closing Leonard Street in Belmont Center

When the Belmont Select Board voted to allow the closure of Leonard Street for the summer at its Monday, June 8 meeting, most people were expecting the actual shutdown of the roadway through Belmont’s largest business center to take place sometime during the summer.

But only two and a half days later on Thursday morning, jersey barriers were in place, a long-line of rusting crowd-control steel barricades were coming being set up by Belmont Department of Public Works crews and town officials had completed the task they said they would do be done.

And while some business owners were caught unawares and the stray parked SUV was suddenly fenced in, the operation was completed without that much of a snag and Belmont Center will be vehicle free until the day after Labor Day, Tuesday, Sept. 8.

And if the change to a walkable center is a success, it could continue into the late fall.

The closing of the street – from Alexander and Moore streets – is an attempt to help restaurants and eateries during the Phase 2 reopening of the state economy during the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. During this stage, restaurants are allowed to serve al fresco with outdoor dining.

Belmont town officials decided to help out the eatery owners by providing added space to the limited sidewalk area they could use by expanding in the street.

And despite some hiccups, by Saturday, the first tables and chairs were out in the warm spring night with customers waiting to finally eat out by eating outside.

Belmont Center’s Leonard Street Closing On Thursday at 10 AM ’til Labor Day

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Photo: The map of the changes coming to Belmont Center with the closure of Leonard Street.

Just two days after the Select Board approved a plan to increase outdoor dining in Belmont Center to help restaurants and retail hurt by the COVID-19 shutdown, the Community Development Office announced Wednesday, June 10 that Leonard Street will be closed as soon as 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 11 and continuing until the day after Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 8.

“Pending available DPW crews, we will be closing the road a soon as tomorrow,” said Glenn Clancy, director of Community Development.

The street through Belmont Center will be shut down from Alexander Avenue to Moore Street with no parking allowed during that time. The roadway will have a 15-foot center lane that will allow for accessed by emergency vehicles, deliveries and MBTA buses only.

The closure could be extended into the fall depending on how successful it is assisting eateries weather the COVID-19 storm.

Vehicles traveling northbound will turn right onto Moore Street to Pleasant Street. Southbound traffic will travel on Alexander Avenue to Cross Street.

With the loss of parking along Leonard Street, parking in the Claflin Street Parking Lot will be free until July 6. Time restricted parking spaces in the Belmont Center area will be enforced starting July 6.

Select Board OKs Move Towards Outdoor Dining In Belmont Center

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Photo: Belmont Center restaurant The Wellington is one of many eateries that will soon be adding outdoor dining

Al fresco dining is coming to Belmont as the Select Board approved outdoor seating for restaurants in Belmont Center to aid local eateries as the state begins cautiously removing restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The plans OK’d at the board’s June 8 meeting calls for closing Leonard Street through Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 7 with a 15-foot emergency access lane in the center of the street for fire apparatus and police vehicles.

Leonard Street would be closed “24/7” from Alexander Avenue to Moore Street beginning in the next few weeks with traffic detoured primarily through the Claflin Street municipal parking lot and onto Channing Road.

With the closure, restaurants and retail stores will be able to expand their operations onto the sidewalk and onto the street in front of their businesses.

“I think this will be a fun summer … like a several month long Town Day,” said Adam Dash, member of the Select Board which approved closing Leonard Street and adopted the new outdoor seating rules.

The outdoor seating will be required to be six-feet apart due to existing state and local COVID-19 restrictions unless the eatery provides a barrier seperating the tables that is acceptable to the Belmont Health Department.

“I think it’s the least we can do to support the businesses in this time of crisis,” said Dash. Massachusetts restaurants have been effectively shut down since the state shutdown all non-essential businesses in mid-March, surviving on take-out orders.

Gov. Charlie Baker earlier in the day included restaurants as part of the state’s Phase 2, Part 1 reopening in which restaurants can start serving diners outside in groups of 6 or fewer customers.

Belmont’s Glenn Clancy, director of the Office of Community Development, said he and his staff looked at how Waltham has modified Moody Street in the city center that has its own emergency access roadway. After discussions with public safety and the town’s Public Works Department, it was deemed Leonard Street was the only road that could be closed without causing a great deal of traffic disruption.

“I think we’re ready to dive into this and start working with the restaurant owners and business owners to get this thing moving,” said Clancy.

While Belmont Center will be the showcase for outdoor dining, restaurants in other parts of town- such as along Trapelo Road which can’t be shuttered due to its heavy level of daily traffic – will be allowed to move onto sidewalks. One potential headache according to Town Administrator Patrice Garvin is that traffic bypassing the center will drift into nearby residential neighborhood.

Damian de Magistris, one of the owners of both il Casale and The Wellington said by all appearances the town is moving in the right direction . de Magistris also wanted the town to know that even if each restaurant – both closed for 75 days – could place 10 tables outside, that would provide about 16 percent of the eateries pre-COVID revenue.

“So the outdoor space is absolutely critical” not just for the economic survival of the businesses but building “consumer confidence in a responsible way by encouraging people to gather in a safe place,” said de Magistris.

Left No-No: Town Set To Experiment With Belmont Center Traffic Patterns

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Photo: The WWI Memorial will become the new way to get onto Concord Avenue westbound from Belmont Center during an experiment to make the intersection with Common Street safer.

Whenever Glenn Clancy thinks Town Administrator Patrice Garvin needs cheering up, he will throw out something “crazy out there” at a meeting or in an email.

“I would talk about, like, my dreams for Belmont Center,” said Clancy, the town’s long-time director of the Office of Community Development as well as the town engineer. Those flights of fancy encompass a design – he is an engineer, after all – that will ease the daily bottleneck of commuters hammering through Belmont’s main business district by sending drivers looping around the center in creative new ways.

Then, last month, Garvin told Clancy that now would a great time to follow that dream.

Last Monday, Clancy received the initial go-ahead from the Belmont Select Board to try out one of a pair of ideas that will require drivers to begin looping around Belmont Center in the name of efficiency and safety.

“My real goal tonight is to have the board … maybe not necessarily say ‘Yes, it’s crazy enough that it might work,’ but say ‘Glenn, it’s crazy enough that we feel comfortable with you kind of taking it to the next step and continuing to do your homework here,” said Clancy.

It will all start with the town putting its foot down on left-hand turns.

“I have always been troubled by the left turn conflicts that are created at that intersection of Common Street and Concord Avenue,” said Clancy. A great amount of southbound traffic coming out of the tunnel wants to turn left onto Concord Avenue westbound towards Cambridge. At the same time, there is a good amount of southbound traffic on Common Street looking to take a left under the bridge entering the Center.

“And so you have these two left-turning movements that are in conflict with each other and with each other and they are creating queuing that is impacting the flow of traffic through Belmont Center,” said Clancy. It’s little wonder that this intersection has one of the highest numbers of fender benders in town.

This is not a new problem. A decade previously, the BSC Group, the Boston-based engineering firm that has been Belmont’s go-to for traffic studies, was looking “at a whole host of ways to manage traffic on either side of the bridge,” said Clancy.

“One of the ideas they threw out there was, ‘Hey, what if we turn the Memorial Island into a roundabout and make everybody come up off the bridge?'” said Clancy. The problem with that proposal meant redesigning the island and its near century-old monument for those residents killed in WWI.

“It would have impacted the Lions Club (located at the Belmont commuter rail station) in the activities that they’re involved with over there would have completely changed the landscape of the memorial island itself,” said Clancy.

“I didn’t have an appetite for that,” he confessed.

The perfect time to experiment

Just as that plan was set aside, an explosion of commuters from Arlington and points west began using Belmont Center as a cut though rather than battle with the gridlock at the Route 2/Alewife Station/Fresh Pond interchanges in Cambridge. With the center’s traffic becoming “so unmanageable,” Clancy put the idea to bed for the next 10 years.

Move forward a decade and due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting stay at home edict passed by Gov. Charlie Baker in mid-March, the traffic levels in Belmont today now resembles what the town sees on a hot Sunday afternoon in August – over 50 percent of the norm.

With traffic levels in Belmont greatly reduced, Garvin told Clancy now would be an opportune time to move forward with a trial balloon on easing traffic through town. “[W]e have a town-wide traffic study that’s informing us on where that traffic’s coming from where they’re trying to get to,” said Clancy.

Rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel, “I thought, ‘Geez, you know, maybe we should try to utilize the existing layout of the roadway’,” said Clancy, keeping the memorial as it is.

The main “experiment” would go back to solving the competing lefts by restricting vehicles from taking the left turn onto Concord Avenue eastbound towards Cambridge. Those looking to travel points east towards the high school or Cambridge would be directed to loop around the WWI Memorial where drivers would then proceed to take the left onto Common Street. (follow the red arrows on the illustration) And, voila! An end to the dueling left-hand turns.

“It’s that simple,” said Clancy. The experiment would last for two to three weeks to determine its impact and effectiveness. “I see us doing it long enough for us to determine whether or not it’s going to work.”

Clancy told the board he would wait until the state begins lifting the stay-in-place restriction on non-essential businesses to better resemble what a typical traffic flow will be. He said the proposal will be studied first by the BSC Group to see if there are “any fatal flaws” in the plan.

What Clancy is aware of is that some residents will see his dream as their nightmare. “I acknowledged that there’s going to be inconvenienced for people to always have to take that right.”

“If this works and this becomes a long term solution, at 11 o’clock in the morning, when you’re going under that bridge and you’ve got all that wide-open terrain in front of you and you’re forced to take a ride and go all around the world to get back to where you want to go, people are not going to be happy,” said Clancy.

But Clancy countered his own observation by stating the vast majority of peak hours traffic is from out of town, commuter traffic.

“They are the ones impacting the quality of life in the town. And there are going to have to be sacrifices made with the residents of the town to mitigate the impacts of the traffic that is coming in going through Belmont, through no fault of the residents who live here,” he said.

The second proposal would be a second looped detour, prohibit left turns onto Concord Avenue towards Town Hall and Pleasant Street after entering Belmont Center from the tunnel. (see blue arrows).

Cutting the queue

Drivers wishing to continue on Concord Avenue westbound towards Lexington and McLean Hospital would be required to travel up Leonard Street to the lights and take the left on Pleasant to reach Concord Avenue. Clancy said this restriction would only be needed for a couple of hours (suggested times: 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.) during the morning and evening commutes.

“What that does is it eliminates any of the bottlenecking that’s occurring right now at the Leonard/Channing/Concord intersection,” said Clancy. The current gridlock can result in traffic backed up on Concord Avenue all the way to Underwood Street adjacent to Clay Pit Pond.

Clancy told the board he’s eager to find a way to unplug the congestion in Belmont Center because a traffic signal will be installed at the intersection of Goden Street and Concord Avenue as part of the new Belmont Middle and High School project. And as it stands now, “that signal is not going to allow a lot of traffic to release off of Goden Street because the queue on Concord is going to be so unmanageable.”

“This is really an effort to try to look not only at the way traffic is flowing in and around Belmont Center but also take an opportunity here to see if we can alleviate the backup that’s occurring on Concord Avenue westbound in the evening,” he said.

While Select Board member Adam Dash dubbed the first plan “brilliant,” he was concerned that halting the left onto Concord Avenue after the tunnel would require anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes to navigate the “loop” to return to Concord Avenue. Clancy said he will see if the lights at the intersection of Leonard and Pleasant has the ability to manage additional traffic and if a dedicated “left” lane can be added on Leonard Street.

Garvin advised the board that the town will have a limited window of opportunity to introduce a new traffic pattern to residents and commuters as traffic begins to “ramp back up.”

“What we’re doing trying to do is gather some information to then bring to the public to see if it worked,” said Garvin.

Both Dash and member Tom Caputo did feel that public input through the Transportation Advisory Committee should be sought but were satisfied that the “experiment” was temporary and there would be public meetings on the result.

With the board’s thumbs up to move forward on the first plan, Clancy will begin meeting with Belmont Police and Public Works on a traffic management proposal that will include the locations of barrels and barriers and where police officers would be stationed.

“And if successful, this will be a full-time change to the traffic pattern coming out of Belmont Center,” said Clancy.