Select Board Widens Envision Project Scope, Composition
June 11, 2025
• The Select Board took no action on the $320,000 grant tied to the project but expanded the committee’s composition and directed the group to examine other lane configurations and potential impacts of the plan.
The Select Board voted unanimously to broaden potential options for a Great Plain Avenue redesign and conduct further analysis on traffic congestion, safety and other factors of the plan at its meeting Tuesday night. A $320,000 grant for the project is still on the table, as the board decided not to take a vote on relinquishing it.
The Envision Needham Center project aims to redevelop Great Plain Avenue between Warren and Linden Streets to revitalize the area and improve safety, according to the project website. The 15-member Envision Needham Center Working Group meets with Apex, the design firm, and is tasked with making recommendations on the project to the Select Board.
Following negative feedback at a public hearing on the project, Vice Chair Cathy Dowd put forward a four-part motion at the board’s previous meeting to, in part, forgo the grant funding altogether. Doing so would effectively “untie our hands and allow us to consider more broadly what kind of model we want,” she said Tuesday.
As part of her motion, Dowd said the town should consider other lane configurations, including a four-lane, three-lane and two-lane version.
Members of the board postponed voting on Dowd’s motion until last night. Dowd said she feels the town “applied for the grant prematurely” and that $320,000, in the grand scheme, isn’t a large sum.
“It’s such a major change to the town center that, I think if we don’t give it up, it remains the dominant plan, and I don’t see how we can actually look objectively at the different options when we’ve still committed to that money,” Dowd said of the grant. “It’s just going to stay there as the elephant in the room, and so I just think we should never have applied, therefore we should walk away.”
The principal driver of opposition to the proposed Envision Needham Center project has been the reduction of Great Plain Avenue’s four lanes down to two — at least for a 12-month pilot period. The board previously decided to delay that pilot, set to start in July, by six months.
Local business owners, as well as residents, said the road diet would increase congestion and hurt business.
The lane reduction would make room for widened sidewalks, sidewalk amenities — such as outdoor dining — and separated bike lanes, the last of which are mandated by the grant fund. As a result, some parking spaces would be lost.
Select Board member Josh Levy signaled support for Dowd’s motion, adding it “allows for a reset.” He, too, spoke against applying for the grant without discussion.
“I really think we should apply for and accept grants for projects that we would have done otherwise, if not for the funding constraints,” Levy said. “I don’t think we should be applying for and accepting grants that require us to do something that we wouldn’t otherwise want to do.”
The town still has a few months before it must accept the grant funding, Director of Public Works Carys Lustig said. While the grant is restrictive, board members agreed to delay their vote in order to further analyze other lane configurations and understand the trade-offs.
“If any of these options, one of which is a two-lane plan, is the one that we choose, it does mean that we have tied our hands and we won’t have access to that money,” Chair Heidi Frail said.
Member Marianne Cooley added that, if they consider a three-lane plan — composed of two lanes with a turning lane — that the pilot funding would still apply. Lustig said Apex is looking at creating an intersection with dedicated turn lanes.
All four engineering firms considered for the project had pitched designs that included a two-lane option, member Kevin Keane said.
Keane, who sits on the Envision Needham Center Working Group, suggested the committee be reduced to seven or eight members and allow, instead, the newly formed committee to take action on the grant with Apex.
“We get a better committee that’s more nimble and adept,” Keane said of the proposed change. “They can look at all the issues we want them to look at, and we still keep an option, never give up the playing card, of a grant.”
The board voted 3-2 to add another business representative to the committee, with Keane and Cooley dissenting, bringing the total committee count to 16 members. Dowd acknowledged that a committee of 15 is “unwieldy” but that an increase of one member, at this point, is “immaterial” and imperative in including more perspectives.
“This is not an obscure project. This is Needham Center. Everybody cares about Needham Center,” Dowd said. “If there was anything for us to want to get full public feedback, it is this project.”
As part of Dowd’s passed motion, the working group and other partners will assess the three plans’ impacts on “traffic congestion, parking, bike safety, pedestrian safety, economic vitality, and cost” and will field additional public input on each plan.
This summer, the working group plans to engage in more public feedback gathering and regroup before entering into more involved traffic studies and preliminary design work, Lustig said.
